Ruler of the Sands
by ncfan
Summary: SUNA. The things he did for the good of his village, and how it didn't really help.
1. At All Costs

Hello. From here on out, all the fics I publish having to do with characters from Sunagakure will not be considered part of the same canon as the works I've done with those characters in the past. This is partly because of the new information the manga's given us since I posted most of those fics, and in an attempt to stay closer to the canon characterizations. There will be a label ('SUNA') on the summary part of the fics, to differentiate them from the new ones from the old ones.

And I find that my first fic (first _multi-chapter_ fic, as it happens; aha) is written from the point of view of a guy whose perspective I have a really hard time writing from (or even understanding) sometimes. I will try my best, though.

Spoilers up to chapter 548.

I own nothing.

* * *

_At All Costs_

* * *

An old Kaze no Kuni superstition asserts that the father is not to be present during the birth of his child. It's bad luck, the old men and women say, nodding sagely and exchanging knowing glances. It would bring ill fortune on both the mother and her child, possibly bring death. Personally, the Kazekage doesn't hold with superstition, doesn't believe that a belief held without proof can have any basis in fact, but it's better to appear to respect old customs, however unreasonable they might be. He wasn't present at the births of his two elder children.

However, for the birth of his youngest, he needs to be there. After all, this is no ordinary birth, and if things don't go well, he might be needed to avert disaster.

The Kazekage's youngest child is not just a child. He is the vessel for the bijuu Shukaku, the Ichibi's host, and tonight is the moment of truth, to see if the sealing was a success. If not, then God help Suna.

But the feared disaster never comes.

A much smaller one happens instead.

The first thing that crossed his mind when he learned that Karura had gone into labor was: _Too soon. _Her due date wasn't until May; she couldn't possibly be giving birth _now_. She had been sick and growing sicker ever since the sealing of the Shukaku, but surely not enough to trigger such a premature birth. Surely not enough to kill her.

Perhaps he had been overconfident.

The birthing chamber is too hot for the season; its air is choked with the stench of blood and amniotic fluid, and above all of that, clinging like fresh mold to the walls, there is the telltale odor of death. After Karura drew in one last, gasping breath, a strange silence descended over the room. The movements of the medics become less urgent and hurried; now, they're starting to put their things away, wordless and pale, going out of their way to avoid approaching where the child lies.

She had named the child, an odd name, as with Temari and Kankuro. She had murmured a promise to protect, though he doesn't see how she'll ever be able to do that now, now that she's dead. And…

"_What a waste," he mutters, staring down at the newborn cupped in his mother's hands, a cold feeling settling in his stomach. Karura's dying, and they'll be lucky if the child survives the night, let alone long enough to grow into the weapon he was meant to be. Wonder why he ever though he could cheat death, wondering why he didn't make his peace with this before now, what the Kazekage wonders is if there will be one death tonight or two, and which would be worse._

_For one moment, a spark ignites in Karura's dulling eyes, what might be indignation curling in her faint voice. "A waste?" She tries to lift her head off of the table, but can't find the strength. Her sweat-soaked blonde hair clings to her cheeks. "A waste? You have no eye for value, if you think that."_

It doesn't seem real. _Is she dead? Is she really dead? _The Kazekage reaches over and presses his fingers against the side of Karura's neck, trying to find any hint of a pulse. For a moment, he thinks there might be some hint of life, but realizes that it's only his own heartbeat he's feeling, not hers. The spark of life has absconded from this body.

_Why didn't I expect this? The sealing has always required a blood sacrifice. The demon demands a life in exchange for being sealed away; I knew that. So why didn't I expect her to die? Why couldn't I see this coming?_

Maybe it's simply because he didn't want her to die.

Her eyes are still open. He'd already seen that, watched her die with her eyes still open, but he only really notices it now, when he realizes that she's still looking at him. Her green eyes are still half-open, dead and dull as marbles, and he feels as though she's taking the opportunity to rebuke him even after death. The Kazekage reaches over and shuts them, thankful to no longer feel his wife's eyes on him.

_I wonder what the superstitious say about people dying with their eyes open._

…_It doesn't matter. Superstition isn't going to save this village._

His attention drawn by the infant's small movements, the Kazekage looks down at the child Karura had died holding. _Gaara, _he tells himself. _That was what she named him. An incredibly odd name, as usual, but that was what she named him. That's what he's called. _Gaara wriggles a bit in his mother's hands, his tiny mouth opening and closing as though he's trying to find the breath with which to cry. Trying to call out for the care of a mother who can no longer hear him. He doesn't realize that his little gasping breaths fall on deaf ears, and that he's never going to be the sort of child who can enjoy the comfort of his mother's arms.

It occurs to the Kazekage that Gaara really doesn't need to be lying there, in the hands of a dead woman. Gingerly, wondering if maybe even the smallest slip will crush a bone or even kill him, he gathers the child, still sticky with a film of amniotic fluid and his mother's blood, into his hands.

He's so small. No matter how many times he thinks that, it still seems new. Temari and Kankuro were both born full-term, and were big, even heavy, when they were born. And neither one of them were this quiet. They had come into the world howling, determined to make their voices heard. But Gaara hasn't made a sound. Not a single sound. He hasn't cried, cooed, or even taken loud breaths. Despite having come out into the world small enough to fit in the palms of his father's hands, he still lives, but he hasn't made a sound. The Kazekage stares down at him, brow furrowed, and swallows. Can something so monstrous as the Shukaku really be encased in such a small, frail child?

Gaara squirms more fiercely now, still making those silent mouthing motions. And, as though a veil has been lifted, sound returns to the room. A fierce wind batters on the windows and fine grains of sand swirl at his feet. With the return of sound comes the return of reality.

The Kazekage knows that he needs to stop looking at Gaara as any normal child. He needs to stop looking at him as his son (_Though as he'll discover later: easier said than done_). Just as he has obligations that make him both more and less than a person, so does this child. He doesn't know it yet, _can't _know it yet, but Gaara is not just a child. He will keep Sunagakure safe from invasion. He will be the force that makes Sunagakure great again. His face hardens. Gaara can not simply be a child. He has to be more than that.

"Kazekage-sama." One of the medics, the only one there who wasn't afraid to touch Gaara earlier, white-clad and veiled, approaches. "We have the incubator ready." The Kazekage nods and hands Gaara over to him. Somehow, he suspects that Gaara, imbued with the spirit of the sand, perfectly formed and living when he should have been born dead, won't need it. However, it won't hurt to let the medics perform their tests and make sure that there really isn't anything wrong with him.

There are other arrangements that need to be made, many things that still need to be done. The Kazekage casts one more glance at Karura lying dead on the table, and almost immediately has to look away again—_that body barely even looks like her with the life gone from it, small and pale and lifeless_. He can't afford to waste any more time here.

"I hope you're prepared to deal with the consequences if this experiment fails." Just as he's at the doorway, Chiyo calls out these last words to him. The old woman's standing around the incubator with the medic, peering down at Gaara with an unreadable expression on her face. But the tone in her voice is clear.

Chiyo had not approved of this measure, offering her services to the sealing only because she wished it to be done correctly—she knew as well as the Kazekage that there were other, less skilled sealing masters who would jump at the chance to curry favor but would probably botch the seal in the process. The Kazekage isn't sure why she chose now to suddenly disapprove of the idea of Suna once again having a jinchuuriki host, since she had quite willingly performed the sealing of the last host and has made it clear all her life that Sunagakure should augment its strength from within, at all costs.

"I'll do what needs to be done," he replies shortly.

The experiment won't fail. Gaara won't fail.

He's made a huge gamble tonight, and given what it's already cost him, the Kazekage will do whatever he has to, in order to make sure it pays off.

And as he leaves, the child finally begins to cry.


	2. See It Slant

_See It Slant_

* * *

The next few days go by as slowly as a sandstorm in midsummer. As the Kazekage suspected, the medics have found that Gaara has absolutely no need of an incubator; despite his miniscule size all of his organs are perfectly formed for a newborn and he has absolutely no need of assisted oxygenation or anything like that. If anything, the medics report that Gaara is healthier than most full-term newborns they've seen, despite being small enough to fit in the palms of a grown man's hands. Chiyo, however, feels that Gaara needs to be kept at the hospital for a while longer.

"_You're telling me you think something is wrong?" the Kazekage asks her sharply, watching as Chiyo lifts Gaara from the bassinet—since there's no longer any need for an incubator, he's been moved out of the intensive care unit._

_Chiyo probes the baby with her long fingers, doesn't look at him, and shrugs. "Maybe, or maybe not. The child shows no signs of being in any serious physical distress. At the same time, he is very quiet, and doesn't eat very well. It would be better to keep him here for observation." Gaara makes a small sound when she presses down on his chest to feel his heartbeat. "However, what I'm more concerned about is the seal. No one's ever sealed a bijuu into an unborn host before. There may be unexpected side effects, both physiological and psychological. The fact that the child lives at all, I think, is one of those effects. And you can see one of the former for yourself."_

_By that, the Kazekage assumes Chiyo is referring to the coal black rings around Gaara's eyelids, strongly resembling the rings that appear around his eyes when he uses the gold dust. In Gaara's case, it looks more like the result of someone having applied too much kohl around their eyes before venturing outside—or the end result of having gone a week without sleep._

Sleep. He's not going to be able to sleep.

_Chiyo seems to sense his sudden thought. She lowers Gaara back down on to the bed, pressing her lips close together. "As with the previous hosts of the Ichibi, if Gaara falls asleep the bijuu will assert dominance over its host. The hosts are, under most circumstances, unable to fall asleep, but there have been exceptions. Gaara can not be allowed to sleep except in a controlled setting. Whoever ends up raising him needs to understand that."_

Yes, he understands. The Kazekage remembers well the last host of the Shukaku and the damage wrought by the bijuu when the host fell asleep. It's been years—he was still a child the last time Suna had a jinchuuriki host in their possession—but he still remembers the screaming, the shattered buildings and the blood staining the earth. He remembers the walls of sand towering over the village, still remembers the fear. That can never be allowed to happen again.

He had left Chiyo to her examinations, hearing as he left the whispering of the other medics. Apparently she hasn't left the hospital in days. Whether it is diligence or perhaps sentimentality that keeps her there, he doesn't care.

Other whispers followed him out the door. He didn't acknowledge them.

Karura's funeral was ill-attended. Yashamaru's still somewhere in Kawa on a mission—he's not due back for nearly a week yet. Those in attendance included the Kazekage, his two elder children, and, for some odd reason, Chiyo, who deigned to leave the hospital. He didn't expect much of a turnout. No one really wants anything to do with anyone even tangentially connected to the demon for fear of bringing the taint of ill fortune upon themselves. And in a way, it's easier. No one's gawking at him, or his children.

The moon's risen high in the sky and the wind has dropped down to a dull whisper, humming against the windows instead of battering them. More reports have come in today, mostly the word being passed on that a few more traders have moved away from Kaze, preferring to do business elsewhere. It's nothing new, but the Kazekage still scowls down at the words. He needs results—positive ones. Not more news like this, day after day.

Pushing the papers aside (it's too late at night for this, entirely too late—or perhaps too early in the morning), the Kazekage leans back in his chair, his eyes drifting to the dark-bleeding windows. All the lights have been doused, all the sounds of day long since extinguished. It's so silent that even the smallest thoughts boom within his skull.

"_It won't work the way you want it to. You know it won't. You know what will happen instead."_

He hadn't expected her to be happy about it. Frankly, _he _hadn't been terribly happy about it either, thinking about all the risks, the odds of success and the potential damage that could be done, but it had to be done. For Suna, it had to be done.

"_I understand that."_

_Her eyes flash. "Do you? The Shukaku's hosts have never been stable. They end up turning on the villagers, if not because of the fact that said villagers treat them like they have the plague, then because the Shukaku's making them lose their minds!"_

"_Karura, I—"_

_She cuts him off, but the fire is gone from her voice. "I… I don't want to die like that." With those words, she looks small, pale, and painfully young. A spasm passes over her face, tugging hideously at her lips. "You understand that, don't you?"_

She was no civilian. She was a shinobi, the same as him; Karura understood full well the concept of sacrifice and giving things up for the good of the village, and the importance of being _willing_ to sacrifice. Maybe she simply hadn't wanted to leave her children behind. He remembers her brushing Temari's hair. Helping Kankuro play with his tiny puppets. Holding Gaara cupped in her hands. He remembers all that, and can well believe that she had wanted to stay with them.

The Kazekage had wavered then, and when he'd recovered his resolve cursed his own lack of confidence in himself and his plan. He's tried to assure her, over and over with his hands on her shoulders that it would be alright, that she would come to no harm. She hadn't believed him (_with good reason, as it turned out_), had scowled and told him not to treat her like a child who didn't understand things, but Karura had still gone to the sealing without protest, head held high and a defiant gleam in her eyes. She was a grown woman, she'd said. She didn't need to be dragged anywhere, even if she didn't like it.

And after the sealing she, leaning heavily on her brother's arm for support (Yashamaru shot him a cold glare, which the Kazekage ignored), had said:

"_For what it's worth, I hope you're right, even if I do think this whole thing is going to blow up in our faces. About the child, I mean. I hope you're right. Because God help us all if you're wrong."_

So far, Karura's already proved to be half-right. She'd predicted her own death, despite all the Kazekage's belief that she was wrong, that she wouldn't die, that she was just… just overreacting. Death she had felt coming for her in her bones, as the demon bound to her unborn young sapped away her strength and made her skin as thin and translucent as paper, her bones brittle as glass. She had wasted away before his eyes, and with a far-too-early childbirth, what little strength was left within her was spent. The Kazekage had hoped to avoid the required sacrifice by having the sealing performed before Gaara was born. But the demon still had its way.

If her death is supposed to be anything but a senseless sacrifice, the Kazekage knows he has to prove her wrong on the other score.

"_Daddy? He hears a small, barely audible voice and a tiny hand tugging on his sleeve. The Kazekage looks down to his right, to see Temari staring up at him with huge green eyes. "_Where _has Mama gone?" She looks confused, and young, and maybe a touch frightened; another seat down, Kankuro wears a near-identical expression, face scrunched up._

_He's not surprised that only Temari speaks; when the two of them hatch some sort of plan, she usually ends up as the spokesperson. "Hush," is all the Kazekage says in response, quiet and expressionless as he can manage. This is a funeral. They ought not to talk._

He needs to make arrangements for his children.

When Karura was alive and she wasn't running missions, she looked after Temari and Kankuro. Now that she's gone, though, there's a gap opened wide that needs to be filled; the Kazekage's responsibility to the village is too much for him to be able to devote his time to looking after his children every hour of the day.

It goes without saying that Temari and Kankuro will have to be raised apart from Gaara. They do not need to be growing too attached to him; he does not need to grow too attached to his siblings either. Once Gaara is old enough he will be trained in earnest to become Sunagakure's living weapon; the Kazekage doesn't need to encourage him to view his siblings as anything but fellow soldiers.

There is another reason, though.

The Kazekage grimaces, trying to brush away the blood-soaked image that suddenly rises before his eyes. _Bodies crumpled against the wall. Bodies broken and leaking blood. Small hands, small feet, small bones crushed beyond recognition. Blank, empty eyes staring up at a pitiless sky. _What a horrible image, even if it's not true.

It is suspected that even an adequately compatible jinchuuriki host would still be unstable. Gaara could very well accidentally (or purposely) injure or even kill his siblings with the sand he will wield in later years. That thought doesn't give their father any pleasure. If Temari and Kankuro should die, it should be as shinobi, in the service of their village. Not as children, slaughtered by their unstable younger brother.

_Unacceptable._

No. They'll simply have to be raised apart.

He goes to stand by the window, watching the streets below. There's a bar nearby; last call seems to have come and gone, for the lights have been extinguished and a couple of slow, sluggish figures stagger away from the shut doors. In the hot, bright mornings when the sun makes the white walls gleam like snow on the mountains, Temari and Kankuro play down below in the streets.

(Will they still play on these streets in years to come? Will the whispers, the rumors, will they be enough to drive them inside? Or will there be stories circulating, stories of blood and death and destruction, stories of the demon's host?)

Though they are the both of them painfully young, Kankuro and Temari are well underway to developing loud, outgoing, short-tempered personalities. They play roughly and don't react well to being ignored; the two of them fall silent in front of their father and no one else. What the Kazekage has also noticed is that they are both exceedingly bright for their age—especially Temari, who has already badgered her uncle into teaching her how to read. If he assigns a civilian caretaker then eventually the two of them will prove to be too much for that caretaker to handle, especially once they start learning the basics of ninjutsu. And there is the matter of protection to consider. _It'll have to be a shinobi—a jonin, preferably_.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Kazekage knows the name, rank, and record of every shinobi in his village, but not by much. He goes over the names of candidates in his mind, frowning. Names are brought up and dismissed for any number of reasons, be it inappropriate temperament, suspect loyalty or the fact that the jonin in question already has a family to be looking after. Eventually, he settles on a name most would have dismissed out of hand.

Baki, a young jonin of even temperament and unimpeachable loyalty. He is extremely young for this sort of assignment—only eighteen, little more than a child himself; eighteen's the age of majority in Kaze (excepting the Bedouins, who consider their children adults at sixteen)—but there are other factors that makes the Kazekage willing to overlook his youth. For one, there's the fact that Baki made jonin at all, despite having lost his left eye during his chunin days in the last war. For another, there's the fact that, despite his youth and relative inexperience, Baki's survived a couple of S-ranks—Hell, forget survived; he's _completed _a couple of S-ranks, and his success rate elsewhere is phenomenal as well. He seems the type who would be more than capable of handling a long-term A-rank mission. The Kazekage will have to see if Baki's in town in the morning.

_Well, that's one problem solved. _He gets an image of the two of them driving Baki insane and almost smiles. _Now for the other problem at hand._

Another image greets his mind's eye. Gaara growing up from afar, shedding the frailty of his birth and growing into the abilities granted him by the Shukaku. Whether he will be Suna's protector or a failed experiment, Chiyo's right. He must be raised with care.

(_He had gone to the hospital again earlier today. Today, Gaara seemed just a touch more responsive than usual. When his father reached out to brush a finger against his face, Gaara turned and curled his small, kitten-sized body. A hand roughly the size of a fingernail reaches out as if to grab his father's finger._

_The Kazekage still can't believe that such a frail child is supposed to be vessel for a bijuu's power. All Gaara looks like to his eyes is his small, fragile son._)

_What to do… _The lone lamp flickers; shadows quake on the walls, like bodies crumpling to the ground, felled by kunai. _This isn't nearly so simple. What to do._

Finding a caretaker for Gaara isn't nearly so simple a proposition as for Kankuro and Temari. Obviously, appointing a civilian to the position is out of the question here. What the Kazekage needs is a shinobi capable of the task, capable of defending Gaara and defending themselves _from him _if need be. He needs someone who can protect a defenseless baby from assassination and kidnapping attempts. He needs someone who won't try to slit Gaara's throat. This time, the Kazekage finds himself drawing from a much smaller pool of candidates.

(_A third image rises from the ether. The three of them, older, Temari the spitting image of her mother, Kankuro of his father, and Gaara resembling both and neither. They stand over ruined corpses or a ruined home, their shadows flickering on the dunes in the light of the dying sun.)_

Then, he realizes that the answer is staring him in the face.


	3. Changing Hands

_Changing Hands_

* * *

Yashamaru's group arrives back from Kawa a day ahead of schedule, in the half-darkness after night but before proper dawn, all of them weary and out of breath, and some of them smelling strongly of blood and antiseptic. As with all groups arriving back from missions north of Suna, they've stopped at the north gate for inspection. However, when the Kazekage goes to the gate to pull his brother-in-law aside, he's not there.

"Try the hospital, sir," one of the medic's teammates, another plainclothes ANBU operative, tells him. "Chiyo-sama sent for him."

And, once again, the Kazekage is left to wonder exactly who Chiyo thought she was fooling when she had claimed to not give a damn about anything that went on in Suna anymore a few months back. Unwilling to stick her neck out for anyone she might be; completely apathetic, she is quite clearly not.

_Let's see if he accepts this proposal, _he thinks to himself, as he mounts the stairwell at the far east end of the hospital. The Kazekage has good reason to believe that Yashamaru will be amenable to what he's planning to propose, but if not…

The door to the observation chamber he pushes open, and stops, dead in his tracks, in the doorway.

A familiar mop of blond hair greets the Kazekage's eyes. Yashamaru is standing over his youngest nephew's bassinet, motionless and silent, his back to the door. His hands are clenched on the wooden rails, knuckles white. He seems about as lifelike as one of the statues in the council chamber. Chiyo stands at his side, her face oddly expressionless. The Kazekage can only assume that she's already given Yashamaru all the explanation he needs. Somehow, the Kazekage doesn't think that's going to make what he's about to do any easier than it would have been otherwise.

But at the same time, he's secretly glad that he wasn't the one who had to tell Yashamaru what happened.

"Chiyo." Chiyo looks up when addressed, but Yashamaru doesn't seem to hear. He doesn't turn his head, doesn't shift his weight, doesn't make even the slightest movement. Considering his training in the ANBU, that's somewhat… worrying. "I need to speak to Yashamaru alone."

Chiyo's face twists in indignation (the Kazekage can just imagine her offense at being so addressed by someone she considers a child, but then again, Chiyo considers pretty much anyone more than ten years younger than her to be a child) at that peremptory address. She adjusts her scarf huffily and starts to limp away from the bassinet. "Hmph. I was leaving anyway." She stops beside him in the doorway. "The child's ready to be discharged. Do try to keep him alive longer than a week."

The two exchange withering glances as Chiyo leaves, and soon, all too soon, her uneven footsteps vanish from hearing.

Silence rushes in to fill the gap.

The Kazekage knows exactly what he wants to say to Yashamaru, knows exactly what he wants to ask him. He can actually feels the words on his tongue. But he has no idea what to _say _to him. The Kazekage can't often claim to have been struck speechless, frankly doesn't like to find himself unable to say anything, but here he is.

He and Yashamaru were never the best of friends. Yashamaru was jealous of his sister's affection and the Kazekage found Yashamaru's feelings for his sister rather… _suspect_. On that score, the Kazekage tried to tell himself that he was just imagining things; after all, he doesn't himself have siblings and, in all likelihood, he knows he's probably just mistaking completely innocent devotion for something it's not. Karura never seemed bothered by it, and given that she was never very good at hiding when she was bothered by something (likely wasn't even trying), the Kazekage likes to think that if _she _had thought there was something wrong with her brother's behavior, she would have made that crystal clear. There was also the matter of a pretty serious personality clash; the Kazekage's never understood how anyone with ANBU training could still be so incredibly _sentimental _after having been in ANBU for more than a week.

But he's always been a loyal soldier.

And the rawness of fresh grief isn't something even he can just ignore.

Eventually, he makes his way over to the bassinet. Yashamaru's eyes, he can see now, are fixed on Gaara's face. The baby's eyes are open and he's examining the new face with interest. He looks as alert as his father's ever seen him. The medic's skin is stretched and strained about his jaw and his eyes. You'd think he'd be crying but instead his gray eyes are dry and blank, like the surface of unpolished steel.

But then, Yashamaru's become an expert at deception ever since he was drafted into ANBU (_Or maybe he already was, and since then was the only time the Kazekage could ever see it_). For all that he's a sentimental young man, he doesn't like to show other people that he's in pain, doesn't like to reveal vulnerability to anyone. He hides his aches behind smiles. That the Kazekage can even see pain on the medic's face shows how much his control has slipped in this moment.

"She wasn't due until May," Yashamaru mutters finally, with the voice of a dead fish.

"No, she wasn't," the Kazekage responds quietly, swallowing and looking away from his brother-in-law.

The Kazekage supposes he's glad that Yashamaru finally spoke. He'd found his silence unsettling; usually when fully-grown, fully-trained nin go silent like that, it's the signal that they're about to do something extremely violent. There's absolutely no question as to how a fight between the two men would go, but the Kazekage would still rather that violence didn't break out in the hospital. The building's run-down enough without adding undue property damage to the list.

At the same time, this wasn't what he'd expected Yashamaru to say. He'd expected him to rail, to shout, to berate, to accuse. The Kazekage's never actually heard Yashamaru raise his voice to anyone before—he'd be genuinely astonished to see it happen—but this could well have been the first time.

He'd almost wanted to hear accusations. He's seen them in those gray eyes for months, building behind a veneer of politeness. Accusations are easy to respond to, no matter what they might be.

Easier than this.

Gaara's eyes switch from examining his uncle's face to looking at his father's. His pale green eyes look like the eyes of a man afflicted with cataracts; there are no visible pupils present within the irides. That, along with the rings around his eyes, his almost unnaturally pale skin and lack of any hair on his eyebrows combines to give Gaara a vaguely inhuman appearance. _He's set apart from all the rest, even by his appearance. _But he still stretches his arms and legs, reaches his tiny hands upwards towards the two faces hovering over him, clearly wanting someone, anyone's attention.

If Karura were still alive, she wouldn't just leave her child alone in that bed, wanting for the warmth of human touch. But she's not here anymore, and the Kazekage still has something he needs to say to his brother-in-law.

"She named him Gaara, in case you're wondering."

"Ah… yes, I know. Chiyo-sama told me."

"I need you to look after him."

At this, Yashamaru finally looks up. There is present, of course, the animosity that the Kazekage has become intimately acquainted with over the past few months, but mostly, the young medic just looks confused, his brow knitted and his mouth set in a perturbed line. "Sir?" he asks uncertainly.

"I need you to look after Gaara, Yashamaru," the Kazekage says again.

Yashamaru's eyes narrow, but thankfully he shows no sign of wanting to refuse outright. "What exactly do you mean by 'look after'?"

_Well at least he's lucid enough to think to ask that sort of question. _"It means that I need you to care for him," the Kazekage explains, as evenly as he can manage; he's uncomfortably aware of the infant in the bassinet watching the proceedings with interest, and can't help but feel it somewhat indecent to discuss a child's future in front of that child. "I need you to raise him."

For a moment, a shadow of something unnamed passes over Yashamaru's face. Then, he asks softly, "Why?" _'Why are you giving your child to someone who you know hates you?' _is the question that unfolds from that one word, the question that goes unsaid.

He can handle being hated. Being the leader of a village and the military governor of a nation is always going to come with hate. And Yashamaru would have a good reason to hate him. If not for what happened to Karura, then because of what's been done to Gaara, and what may happen yet. If it means being able to keep the people in the city below safe, the Kazekage will take on all the hatred he has to.

He also knows, however, that Yashamaru, though a good liar, can't help but give some things away. He knows that Yashamaru won't extend his animus to Gaara; Yashamaru isn't the sort of person to hate an innocent, and he could never bring himself to hate any of his sister's children. And Yashamaru is, as he has noted before, ridiculously sentimental for someone with ANBU training. That's what the Kazekage's counting on.

"I need someone I trust," he admits reluctantly, ruing the fact that Yashamaru _is_ probably the only nin in Suna who is both qualified to look after and protect Gaara, and can be trusted not to try to kill him. He ought to be able to trust more of his elite with his youngest child, but there the truth lies: Yashamaru is the only one who can be counted on. "I need someone who can take care of Gaara, and can both protect him and protect himself from him, without dying in the process of either. I also need someone I can trust not to raise him to be a psychotic lunatic."

Yashamaru folds his arms across his chest, frowning skeptically. "I thought your plan was to mould Gaara into a living weapon."

The Kazekage glares at him for being deliberately obtuse. The implication that he _wants _Gaara to become a psychopath stings as well. "Yes, that is the plan. However, I wouldn't mind Gaara possessing perhaps a _degree_ of mental stability. It's significantly easier to direct a soldier than it is to control a monster. You know that."

Barely missing a beat, Yashamaru proceeds to make his reservations plain. "You'll still need me for missions," he points out flatly. "ANBU's short-staffed as it is; they can't afford to lose an operative to a long-term assignment."

True enough. _In a few years, if nothing else goes seriously wrong and there aren't any more wars, our forces will recover. But until then…_ "You'd only be put on short-term assignments, assignments that didn't take you out of the village."

Yashamaru nods, his eyes flickering to the ground for a moment as he mulls the information over. "Chiyo-sama told me that Gaara won't be able to sleep."

"That's correct."

"Ever?" Yashamaru asks, troubled.

_I suppose he wouldn't know that. Intimate information about jinchuuriki hosts—information that couldn't be gathered just by observing them or hearing stories from people who had, anyway—is on a need-to-know basis. Yashamaru's never actually needed to know before now. _The Kazekage thinks about exactly what the caretaker of a baby incapable of sleeping will go through between the time when the baby is born and when it's old enough to get up at night and get food for itself, and grimaces. _And you know, I don't envy him at all._

_If he takes the assignment._

The Kazekage sighs. "No, he can never sleep. A host of the Shukaku is normally incapable of sleep, but there are exceptions. You would have to make sure that he never falls asleep. Otherwise the Shukaku would take control and berserk."

Yashamaru gapes at him, no doubt going over the psychological ramifications of never being able to sleep in his head. "You're aware that chronic insomnia is hardly conducive to mental stability, aren't you?"

He shakes his head and reaches up to rub his forehead wearily. "We'll do the best we can." Yashamaru opens his mouth, probably to voice another objection, but the Kazekage cuts him off. "Yashamaru, I need you to do this. Gaara can _not _be raised alongside his siblings. He has to be kept separate from them. You understand that, don't you?"

Thankfully, Yashamaru nodding, a grim look passing over his face, indicates that he does. Good. At least they're on the same page concerning that.

But he still says nothing about whether he'll consent.

"Yashamaru, your sister would not have wanted—"

Yashamaru's eyes flash. "Please do not talk to me about what my sister would or would not have wanted, Kazekage-sama," he retorts unevenly, swallowing hard. His whole body seems to radiate loathing, but he doesn't so much as move, his arms still folded tight across his chest. "She didn't want this for her child, and she didn't want to die."

With that rebuke, with that reproachful look, Yashamaru looks so painfully like his sister that the Kazekage has to look away. "I… know that."

Silence falls over the room again.

The wind picks up and batters against the windows. They both look to the windows at that moment—the battering is so strong that it could be and is mistaken for a physical entity. The sun's starting to peak over the horizon, leaking light on the roofs of the buildings of Suna. Yashamaru's eyes glaze over as he watches the sand that seems to be trying to get in through the cracks between the window and the frame.

Then…

"Alright," Yashamaru mutters, barely audible. He tips his chin up decisively, as if convincing himself to go along with it. "I'll do it."

The Kazekage will never know what made him consent to care for Gaara. He'll never know what led Yashamaru from seeming ready to refuse to agreeing to take in his nephew, to change his whole life based on a request made by a man he hated.

"Good… Thank you."

"Of course." Yashamaru turns away from him, and back to Gaara, as though the Kazekage was never here at all. He smiles slightly, his first smile all morning, reaching down to touch the child's hand. "I know where my duty lies," he says quietly.

So do they both.

And so he walks from the hospital room, and out of his son's life.


	4. On the Fringe

_On the Fringe_

* * *

The months slip by. From the traders, the daimyo, from all and sundry who could break Kaze without ever throwing a kunai or landing a blow, it's more of the same. The daimyo keeps cutting funding (in favor of funding his own profligate pursuits, no doubt) and the traders keep going elsewhere, increasingly to Ame and Hi no Kuni; pretty much the only trade still as prosperous as it used to be is the gold trade. Just as worryingly, those who in the past relied on Sunagakure's shinobi for their services have begun to turn their attention elsewhere. Namely, to Konohagakure.

_Sorry, but you're asking for too much money. That's an outrageous sum to demand for such a job. Konoha will do it for half that…_

And so the excuses go. They'll just have to do what they've always done: train the shinobi until they can comfortably be called the best in all the lands, accept any and ever job that is offered to them, try to get more traders to do business with Kaze, and pray that that will be enough to keep Suna from going under for another year. The Kazekage knows it's a bad sign when _he _starts praying too.

But as it stands, he finds himself praying for a lot of things lately.

-0-0-0-

Every time he lays eyes on Temari and Kankuro, they seem to have gotten bigger. They've reached that first stage of life where they grow and grow and never seem to stop growing. Constantly outgrowing their clothes and their shoes, and old toys and the mannerisms of toddler-hood. Broken phrases are replaced with full sentences and something resembling proper grammar, and it becomes less difficult with each passing month for the Kazekage to speak to them in terms they can understand.

Not to say that a lot of what he says doesn't still go sailing clean over their little heads. But given exactly _what _he says sometimes, not meaning for them to hear, that's probably for the best.

"They've been well, then? The both of them?"

It's one of those blindingly hot summer days. The sunlight seems itself to be on fire, burning the rooftops and the tender skin of anyone unfortunate enough not to remember proper protection. Despite the heat, though, the streets are busy, ringing with noises, bustling, filled with the mixed smells of meat cooking, tea brewing, spices, livestock, busy enough that you'd never know that this was a village in economic decline.

(But all you'd have to do to be reminded of that would be go _into _one of the shops on this particular high street and take a good look at the price tags on the wares.

And then you'd probably decide that you needed to go to the next country over to do your grocery shopping.)

Kankuro and Temari play out in the street, dodging driven carts and darting between peoples' legs, while their father and caretaker watch from beneath the shade of an awning. Kankuro narrowly avoids being trampled by a passing herd of sheep, being brought to market, and the Kazekage has to resist the urge to shout to him to be more careful. _Getting stepped on by a sheep isn't going to kill him. He's never going to learn by being coddled._

The child emerges from the herd completely unharmed, his face flushed with laughter. He only starts to scowl when the shepherd, a grizzled old man wearing the clothes of a Bedouin, cuffs him sharply about the back of the head. "You should be more careful, boy," the shepherd admonishes him, before steering his herd further down the street, taking their baying and their musky odor with them.

_Well, at least we'll always have the Bedouin shepherds, even if all the other traders go elsewhere. I suppose that's something._

Baki doesn't take his one eye off of his charges as he answers. "Yes, very," he answers in that laconic way of his. That's his way, to follow them and make sure they don't get hurt or kidnapped, discipline them if he feels like he has to, but not to interfere if both seem content. Pretty much the only time he actively leads them anywhere is back home at night and away from the part of town where their brother and uncle lives. The young jonin seems… _content_ that way, but ill-at-ease and gruff if he has to take any more active role in Temari and Kankuro's lives.

Temari catches up to Kankuro and roughly shoves him to the ground. "Tag! You're it!" she shrieks, eyes shining, and ducks through an open doorway into a tea shop. Kankuro takes a moment to catch his bearings, coughing at the dust, but he soon clambers to his feet and follows, a look of uncommon determination coming over his small face. Baki cranes his head so he can continue to watch them without leaving the shade; the Kazekage's lip twitches, despite himself.

_At times like this, they hardly seem to notice…_

The Kazekage isn't sure what his two elder children think of their mother, isn't sure what they hear or even what they've been told. They're so young, the two of them, that when they're grown they'll probably not have any memory of her at all—all they'll have to go on is what they've been told, and what they hear whispered in the streets. They rarely see their father anymore, except early in the morning; their uncle's become a non-entity in their lives, they've likely never even laid eyes on their brother, and any other family is nonexistent. Yet here they are, playing about in the streets and the shops, having shaken off the sadness of their mother's passing, and if they are at all affected by their unusual situation, they do a good job of hiding it (_Or are simply too young to know any better_).

_Small children really are quite resilient._

The two get shooed out of the shop by a woman with a broom, her hair falling out of her turban and a deeply harried expression on her sweaty face. Banished to the outside again, their shadows dancing on the gleaming white walls with every movement, both siblings wear near-identical expressions of frustration for a moment. Then, Temari waves her arm down the street in the direction that the sheep went. The two of them move on.

Baki follows.

The Kazekage has to get back to work.

All seems to be well.

-0-0-0-

On another front, however, he can't be nearly so sure that all is going well or will be well.

If the Kazekage only sees Kankuro and Temari early in the morning, he only sees Gaara once every couple of weeks. Yashamaru lives in a remote part of Sunagakure far from the eyes of the Governmental Complex. The Kazekage can't often spare the time away from work to make that long walk—and it's still a long walk even if you go by roof instead of road. Yashamaru's quiet animosity remains, subtle but impossible to miss. And Gaara…

Something about Gaara, the way he moves, the way he looks at him, the sheer alien nature of his existence, makes the Kazekage at the best of times uncomfortable in his presence.

What crosses the Kazekage's mind first whenever he sees Gaara is that Temari and Kankuro were both bigger at his age. Though Yashamaru reports that he's rarely sick, is in fact an extraordinarily healthy boy, Gaara seems not to have shed the frailty of his infanthood. He's small, unnaturally pale for one of the desert's children, and nearly totally silent. His blood-colored hair is too bright for this washed out world. His existence doesn't seem to mesh with his surroundings.

"Gaara?"

Today, he's mostly aware of Gaara as the tiny, green-eyed shadow attached to Yashamaru's leg, moving in step with his uncle so he'll have a barrier between him as the unknown—in this case, the unknown being the father he rarely sees.

Yashamaru smiles down at his nephew—it's amazing how his expression melts with (thankfully) genuine affection when his eyes shift to his flesh and blood. Whatever hesitation he might have had about raising Gaara has been completely forgotten. "Gaara, your father's come to see you. Won't you say hello?"

Gaara does no such thing. He stares up at his father with those black-rimmed eyes, green like his mother's, though a different shade, slanted and shallow like his father's, and says nothing. Those eyes have followed him all about the house ever since he arrived, watchful, wary. Like he's waiting to be attacked. Maybe it's just the shyness of a shy child, but there's something about the way Gaara's eyes never seem to leave him that seems less than innocent.

_What am I so wary of? He's _two_; why am I having these thoughts about a boy who can't even write his own name yet?_

When it becomes clear that no reply will be forthcoming, Yashamaru explains, half-apologetically, "He doesn't say much, especially not around people he doesn't know very well." A slightly reproachful tone can be heard, threaded in the words, which the Kazekage ignores. "Gaara, why don't you go play in the living room?"

This Gaara does, with remarkable understanding for such a young child. He toddles out of the kitchen and back to the living room where brightly painted wooden blocks were left, still in clear view of his father and caretaker. He's quickly so totally absorbed in play that he barely seems to notice that he's still being watched.

Sitting down at the kitchen table (Yashamaru follows suit), the Kazekage supposes he shouldn't be surprised that Gaara said nothing today. To date, his youngest child has said a total of five words in his presence, "Up!" (a demand that Yashamaru pick him up) being the most frequent. And it's almost a relief that he won't be called upon to try to speak to him—the Kazekage's never had an easy time interpreting toddler babble, and an even harder time figuring out how to respond to it. But at the same time, perhaps because he's so used to his boisterous elder children, it seems unnatural for any child to be so quiet, so withdrawn.

"He's been well, then?" the Kazekage asks quietly. He's not sure why he bothers lowering his voice—it seems absurd to; it's not like Gaara will really understand what they're saying or possess the capacity to spread the word on to others.

However absurd it might be to keep the voice low when talking about a toddler, Yashamaru does it too. "Yes, as well as can be expected, given the circumstances." He looks exhausted, paler than usual with dark bags under his eyes; whether this is from the special rigors of raising a child who can't sleep and needs some way to keep entertained during the night, or because of his recent mission—the other reason the Kazekage's here—can't be properly told.

By "circumstances", the Kazekage can only assume Yashamaru's referring to Gaara's insomnia. "Good," he mutters, nodding. Then, he narrows his eyes, noticing something for the first time.

Gaara plays with his painted, patterned blocks, making towers and knocking them over again in favor of new configurations or different blocks with different graphics painted on them. He doesn't seem to notice the thin cloud of sand hovering around him.

_Has Yashamaru left the window open? No, he hasn't. There's no wind. _He frowns. _It must be the Shukaku._

"Yashamaru, how long has that…"

Yashamaru follows his gaze. "The sand?" he asks softly. "It follows him wherever he goes. It's harder to pick up on in the streets, but I'm surprised you didn't notice it sooner."

Frankly, the Kazekage can't help but be a little alarmed at this revelation. _The Shukaku shouldn't be showing its influence this early._ "What exactly does it _do_?"

Pale, long-fingered hands flutter in front of their owner as Yashamaru bites his lip—the cogs can be clearly seen whirring behind his skin as he picks at certain pieces of past information. "As I said, it follows him around wherever he goes. It also…" He draws in a deep breath, a shadow passing over his eyes as he watches Gaara stack blocks, one on top of the other. "…It also protects him from getting hurt."

_Well… That's… new. _"How so?"

The medic shrugs. "When Gaara is in danger of being hurt, any danger at all, the sand rises up as a shield against harm. He tripped on the stoop one day recently and the sand wouldn't let him hit the ground." His expression sharpens, a subtle change visible only in the miniscule tightening of his mouth. "Was this normal for the past jinchuuriki?"

"Yes and no." As the Kazekage recalls, both of the previous jinchuuriki of the Shukaku could manipulate sand; that was how wielders of the Magnetism release like himself learned to manipulate metal more efficiently, following the jinchuuriki's example. However, they had to consciously direct the sand and be trained in how to use it properly, the sand did _not _rise up about them independent of their will, and it _certainly _didn't provide automatic protection. He supposes it could have something to do with the fact that the bijuu was sealed into an unborn child for the first time; it could be another one of those "side effects" Chiyo was talking about. Or maybe the Shukaku's just taking special care this time, since its third host is a defenseless child.

_It's certainly not anything I'm going to complain about; at the very least, a sand shield that acts automatically will put a damper on assassination attempts._

No matter. It's high time they got down to talking about the other reason the Kazekage came all this way. "Yashamaru, about your last mission—I got your report, but I also get the impression that that wasn't all there was to it. Would you care to elaborate?"

Yashamaru makes the shift from gentle caretaker to no-nonsense ANBU operative so abruptly as to be genuinely startling, yet the change itself is only visible about his eyes, hardening and dulling. "We found and executed the infiltrator, as you ordered, but I still have my concerns about security here."

"How so?"

"The infiltrator had a fake I.D. Alright, so that's not all that unusual; most infiltrators do. However, the quality of the I.D. card itself leads me to believe that the infiltrator had inside help."

"Fantastic."

All of the nations have to deal with security breaches like this on a regular basis; it comes with the territory. Suna can't go a solid month without getting reports of infiltration, and usually they deal with it in short order. But the issue of a traitor within Kaze's ranks is a whole other can of worms. _I'll have to have the ANBU commander start conducting investigations into anyone the infiltrator's known to have associated with while here. Looking into anyone who's ever worked at I.D. distribution center probably wouldn't hurt either…_

He's drawn away from his thoughts by a small hand, all cool, soft skin and tiny fingers, tugging on his own. The Kazekage looks down to his left, and finds his gaze met by those pale, black-rimmed, barely blinking eyes. Gaara stares up at him. Then he holds one of his blocks out to his father, and smiles one of his shy, elusive smiles—when his face lights up like that it's harder than ever to believe that he is what he is, even with the black rings around his eyes and the living sand hovering at his back.

Decidedly bemused, the Kazekage takes the block. Apparently satisfied, as quickly and quietly as Gaara crept up on him, the child retreats back to the security of the living room floor.

"As I said…" Yashamaru is smiling again, but his eyes are shadowed with something that goes unnamed. "He's just shy. He's a sweet child, underneath it all."

-0-0-0-

In rare moments, exceedingly rare moments, the Kazekage has the opportunity to observe all three of his children together.

Sometimes, he thinks the cross-village Chunin Exams are more trouble than they're worth.

For one thing, security has to be amped up to the point that foreign nin can't do so much as sneeze without having ANBU all over them. That takes time, money and resources—and takes away manpower that could be put to use on missions, earning much-needed revenue for the village.

For another, there's the matter of all the dignitaries who show up for the Chunin Exams, even when they're being held in a place that the Wind Daimyo (hypocrite) once charmingly described as "ten degrees hotter than Hell." There's the accommodations to consider, and the extra security they'll need on top of all the extra security that's _already _been put in place. The Hokage's coming down from Konoha this time and everyone's worried about what a catastrophe it would be if the old man dropped dead of the heat while in the village or before he even got to the village, and what an utter nightmare it would be trying to convince Konoha that no, they didn't kill their Hokage. And then there's the fact that they're going to have to house all the Konoha and Kumo nin (the two villages are currently at war) as far away from each other as they can...

Basically, every time the Chunin Exams are held the potential for an international incident to occur rises by roughly ten thousand percent. Pretty much the only good thing to come from it is that Suna's economy gets a sorely-needed boost from the sudden influx of foreign shinobi and civilians, spending their money on Suna's goods and services.

But whether the Chunin Exams are worth it or not, they're happening in less than two weeks, so the Kazekage finds himself going to meet the proctors about last-minute arrangements for the third time in as many days. The sun is starting in earnest to fall out of the sky, casting deep shadows over the streets and bathing the white-washed buildings red. _Hopefully this won't take too long, and—_

"Yashamaru!"

He stops dead, when he hears his daughter calling out her uncle's name. Standing at the mouth of an alley stacked high with boxes, the Kazekage gets a good look at the scene unfolding before him.

While walking home, Temari, Kankuro and Baki appear to have crossed paths with Yashamaru and Gaara. Baki has always taken care to minimize the risk of this happening, thankfully knowing without needing to be told the importance of keeping his two charges away from their potentially dangerous brother, but the presence of a plastic grocery bag swinging from Yashamaru's arm explains the situation in its entirety; the grocery store nearest to Yashamaru's house is a fifteen-minute walk further towards the center of the village.

Temari waves and Kankuro grins, Yashamaru smiles back, and neither of them notice Gaara's presence, given that the toddler has swiftly retreated behind his uncle's leg again. Baki, however, knows that wherever Yashamaru is, Gaara is likely not too far behind, and stiffens. The Kazekage can practically see the cogs whirring behind Baki's sole eye, him wondering if he should whisk the two of them away before they can notice Gaara.

Too late.

You can see it in their faces, in their very skin, the moment Kankuro and Temari notice Gaara. The smiles fade from their faces and they stare at him, at the shadow clutching Yashamaru's pant leg, at what should be so small, but ends up seeming to loom over the whole proceedings.

They're both quiet for a long time, seemingly glued together in their staring. All is silent, Baki tense and Yashamaru licking his lips as though preparing himself mentally for something painful. Gaara doesn't move an inch from behind his uncle's leg. The Kazekage stands in the shadows and watches.

_How will they react? Do they even know?_

Just as he starts to think that this standoff will never end, Kankuro breaks off from his group. The Kazekage watches, eyebrows raised—though they squabble and fuss, Kankuro rarely does anything without his sister doing it first—as Kankuro, quite decisively, walks up to his uncle and his brother, with the clear intention of engaging the latter.

Gaara isn't having it. When Kankuro ducks behind Yashamaru to get a better look at him, Gaara backs away from him, coming around to his uncle's front, eyes huge, holding his teddy bear up to his chest like a shield.

"Hey." Kankuro frowns as his attempt to speak to his brother essentially devolves into a game of tag, but without any laughter or joy. "Why're you doing that? I'm your _brother_. I'm not gonna hurt you."

This serves as the catalyst for Temari to come dashing up to them as well, and for Baki to take a few uncertain steps forward, clearly torn between putting this meeting to a stop and wondering just what on Earth the harm's supposed to be in this. Temari adds her voice to Kankuro's. "Won't you talk to us? We're your family."

(The Kazekage wonders who told them that. He realizes that it wasn't him, and has to look away for a few moments.)

When he turns his attention back to the proceedings, some progress appears to have been made. Gaara isn't trying to run away from his siblings or make himself invisible anymore. Temari's kneeling down in front of him and smiling encouragingly—_How small he is, that she has to do that; _seeing Gaara with his siblings only serves to further underscore just how painfully small he is. Gaara whispers something that doesn't carry but makes Kankuro laugh. Grinning from ear to ear, the older boy exclaims "You can come play with us sometime!"

Not happening, unfortunately.

"Kankuro…" Yashamaru's still smiling, but there's something heavy in his face and voice that makes him seem far older than his twenty-three years. He doesn't seem to be quite capable of puncturing his older nephew's hopes, for he doesn't say that he and Temari aren't supposed to be around Gaara in the first place. _I'm willing to excuse it… just for one day. _Kankuro doesn't notice the heaviness in his uncle's face, and keeps chattering on excitedly.

The relative tranquility of the scene is shattered in one fell swoop.

Suddenly, the sand at Gaara's back flares up like a great tidal wave as a man emerging from one of Sunagakure's many bars throws a half-empty bottle of arak at him. Just as abruptly as it caught the bottle, a tendril of sand lobs it back where it came from with frightening force. The bottle shatters against the wall, colorless arak dregs oozing down the plaster and a strong, pungent odor fills the air.

The Kazekage is forcibly reminded of the last time the previous jinchuuriki host lost control before the bijuu was extracted. _She killed everyone around her and leveled a city block. And now something like that might happen over a liquor bottle?_

After that, several things happen at once. Gaara drops to his knees, shaking and near tears, every trace of cheer gone from him. Yashamaru spins on his heel. Baki lunges forward to pull Temari and Kankuro, white-faced and huge-eyed, away from their brother and the trembling wall of sand still towering over him. The Kazekage takes a step into the street, scowling, a sharp rebuke on the tip of his tongue.

Except Yashamaru beats him to the punch.

Yashamaru, _still_ smiling, fixes the man who had thrown the bottle and the man standing at his shoulder in a deceptively mild stare. "Gentlemen… Is there a problem?" he asks, all too reasonably.

The Kazekage will admit, however grudgingly, that it's rather impressive how Yashamaru took all of half a second to become by far the most intimidating person currently present in the street—and that's when the street contains such personages as a one-eyed jonin, the Suna jinchuuriki, and the Kazekage (though the drunkard doesn't seem to have noticed him), and considering that no one but the latter knows that he's anything but your typical middle-of-the-road chunin.

And the way he accomplished that without changing his expression in the least?

Everybody present has to admit… That's kinda freaky.

The drunkard, a man with a prosthetic where his left leg used to be—a retired shinobi, then, or a civilian who met with an accident—is too far gone in drink to notice that he's in danger of losing a good portion of his skin, if not his life, but the man with him, who appears to actually be sober, takes one look at Yashamaru and smells danger. He apologizes profusely for his friend and hisses something in the man's ear as he carts him off.

Still stunned, Temari and Kankuro are led away by Baki, who looks rather shaken himself. Yashamaru lifts Gaara into his arms. He catches the Kazekage's eye and nods. Unsurprised by Yashamaru's acknowledgement of his presence, but himself rather startled by the actions of the sand, the Kazekage returns the gesture, still mulling over the possibilities of death and destruction.

As the medic's slight form melts into the lengthening shadows, a cloud of living sand follows him, like a parent hovering over their child—or a demon shadowing its host.

* * *

Notes:

1: Arak—a strong, distilled liquor flavored with anise. In our world it's native to the Middle East.


	5. Imbalance

_Imbalance_

* * *

Mercifully, the Chunin Exams went off without a hitch. Despite having shinobi from Konoha, Iwa, Kumo, Ame and Kusa present this year—Kirigakure's never actually participated in the Chunin Exams before, and no one's expecting them to any time soon—there were no major security breaches to speak of. A couple of skirmishes erupted when Konoha and Kumo nin ran into each other in the street, the two villages being currently at war, but that wasn't anything the ANBU couldn't take care of, since the combatants were all genin anyways. A night in one of the local jails was usually enough to cool their heads.

There were no more incidents with Gaara's sand. Yashamaru had taken care to keep the boy inside as much as he could for the duration of the Chunin Exams, both to minimize the risk of kidnapping or attempted assassination and to avoid running into any more drunkards or anyone else who would try to provoke the toddler jinchuuriki on a whim. Gaara didn't seem particularly keen on leaving the house during the Chunin Exams anyways. _"He doesn't like crowds," _Yashamaru explained. _"They're overwhelming for him."_

Just as well.

Though the foreigners had indeed brought more money into Suna than it had seen in years, the Kazekage couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when it was time for them to go. The security risk they posed was too great to be fully satisfied by any benefit their presence might have reaped.

And all is quiet for a few months after that.

Then, it starts.

-0-0-0-

The first time it happens, the Kazekage tells himself that it's nothing to be worried about in the long run.

Gaara, now a not-quite three-year-old, has taken to roaming the streets by himself whenever Yashamaru can't be with him. If Yashamaru has to go on a mission or fill in at the hospital for a few hours (everyone pulls double-duty here, even one who has a full-time assignment to care for a child), or has to go anywhere else he can't bring his nephew with him, Gaara is usually left to his own devices. Gaara can't be brought to the residential section of Governmental Complex for obvious reasons, and the list of people willing to baby-sit him is short indeed. So Yashamaru has to leave him by himself, and eventually the child grows bored, and starts wandering about the narrow streets and back alleys of Sunagakure.

Normally, Gaara is left unthreatened, unbothered. Of course, normally he's wandering about in the daylight, avoiding crowds as best he can. Most adult citizens roaming the daylight-drenched streets have the good sense to give him a wide berth, either because they're old enough to remember the last jinchuuriki, or because they can just smell danger from the sight of the living sand hovering about him. He tries to play with the other children sometimes and they run away, afraid of the sand, but none of them try to hurt him or provoke him. He just drifts about, small and alone, until Yashamaru catches up with him or he decides to go home. And even when Yashamaru can't be with him, there are still other ANBU watching him from a distance. If anyone tried to hurt him, the ANBU would put that threat to a stop almost immediately.

The trouble doesn't come from Gaara's daytime wanderings. It's when he roams the streets at night that the first signs of things to come arise.

No one's sure quite what it was. The man wasn't drunk, nor was he blind or a foreigner. The ANBU who had watched the scene unfold aren't sure what the man said to Gaara for their distance and aren't sure what the meanings of his gestures were for the darkness of the moonless night. They're not sure what happened. Maybe he threatened Gaara, or maybe he didn't.

But what happened next is very clear.

The sand lashes out and the man screams, a pitiful howl rising in the night. Black blood soaks the sand; fingers dig furrows in the dust, and are then engulfed. The ANBU move quickly and the man lives. Gaara comes away from the experience shaking and one of the agents takes him back to Yashamaru's house where his uncle waits.

Upon receiving the report, the Kazekage is troubled, but he does his best to brush it from his mind. _No one died and the Shukaku didn't show itself. _There is an unshakable truth that stares him in the face. This was how it started with the last hosts. They would attack someone for no discernible reason, and wouldn't kill them, but this was how it started, this was how it started to fall apart.

Pink tendrils of light cleave the dawn sky into a thousand pieces. The Kazekage puts this hastily-scrawled report back on his desk and sighs wearily. Truth sits opposite him, staring quietly, patiently, but he pays it no mind. He knows logically what this means, what it will lead to, and what will eventually have to be done. But logic and emotion are so totally divorced that they never meet.

So the first time it happens, he turns a blind eye to it. The auguries are clear, but he tries not to see it. So many of his hopes ride on Gaara growing into a stable man. This village's whole future depends on Gaara becomes a reliable shinobi of Sunagakure. He remembers that moon-pale, dead-silent slip of a child, remembers eyes and hands, and turns a blind eye to one night of blood.

-0-0-0-

Next time, it's not nearly so easy to ignore.

A shinobi on leave and his child are strolling down one of the nine main roads in broad daylight. Gaara is walking down the same street, going in the opposite direction; he spots the girl, who's about his age, and smiles hopefully, perhaps hoping for a playmate. The girl shies away from Gaara and his sand; the shinobi spots him, recognizes him, and has sharp words to say.

"_Keep away from my daughter!"_

The chunin will live, even if his career is over. His daughter won't be so lucky.

The councilors scowl and grumble among themselves, and the Kazekage can't tear his eyes away from the on-the-scene photograph taken of the girl. She had been a happy child with a gold-tanned skin and hair that gleamed bronze in the sunlight; all who knew her agree that she was lovely. Now she can barely be recognized as a child at all, or even human. All that is left of her that can be clearly seen is her eyes. Her wide-open eyes, gazing blankly up at the pitiless sun. That's all he can see.

-0-0-0-

They keep coming, keep happening.

More reports come in, once every other month to once a month to once every two weeks to once a week of some incident. Of death or injury. Of blood staining the walls and leaving brown stains on white-plastered stone even after being wiped away. Of hospitalizations and quiet funerals. Gaara's most frequent targets seem to be other children, his contemporaries, trying to keep them from running away from him when he tries to play with them. Parents mourn for their lost children and curse those responsible.

They've started calling the child Sabaku no Gaara, Gaara of the Sand Waterfall, for the wave of sand that rises above him when the attacks occur. A tidal wave of sand, promising death to hapless victims the way tidal waves herald death for seaside towns. All of it rising above the body of a frail child belonging to the desert. The adults avoid him. The children run when they see him.

The councilors have begun raising their voices in earnest. _"Something must be done, and soon!" "Fear of the child scares away the traders!" "By the time the youngest generation are old enough to become shinobi, there will hardly be any of them left!" _All this and more, protests that can't be discounted or ignored anymore, redouble with each new attack.

And now the Daimyo's gotten wind of it too. The Kazekage grimaces as he remembers the letter he had gotten, winces to know how bad it's gotten that even the Daimyo, who can barely be bothered to pay attention to what's going on in his nation, knows what's going on.

"_Completely out of control… If Kaze no Kuni can not be seen as capable of controlling their jinchuuriki… A horrible embarrassment… Laughing-stock… Matters of funding… Can't risk the money when the village could be wiped out at any moment…"_

The words stay with him, and he feels the truth of them all too keenly. At the same time, he's frustrated, because all of these people are telling him this like it didn't occur to him too.

"What happened this time?" the Kazekage demands.

Yashamaru shakes his head, frustrated, and puts a hand to his bandaged forehead, his sleeve falling away to reveal yet more bandages. This isn't the first time they've had such a conversation, isn't the first time Yashamaru's found himself sore, bruised and bleeding after one of his nephew's attacks—always from having bodily shielded Gaara's intended victims. However, the answer he gives is the same as always.

"I don't know," he mutters, holding himself as though his ribs are sore—and they probably are. "I wasn't there to see what set him off. I can't be with him every hour of the day," he adds sharply when he spots the Kazekage's glare.

_Yes, and that's the problem. _Gaara rarely attacks someone when Yashamaru is with him, and usually his arrival on the scene of an attack is enough to make the boy stop. But all the same, it's becoming increasingly, painfully clear that the boy is losing control. You just have to look at the reports piling up on the Kazekage's desk and the amount of blood drops mixing in with the dust of the roads to see that.

Wincing, Yashamaru lowers himself into a chair, and his breathing evens out. The dying light of a dying day adds color to his otherwise-waxen cheeks (well, the one that isn't hidden behind an adhesive bandage), but all it does is make him look like he's covered in blood—again.

"I don't understand why you don't go to a hospital. Or at least use healing jutsu on yourself." The sight of Yashamaru in this state is a genuinely pitiable one, but the Kazekage can't for the life of him understand why Yashamaru, a medic of no small skill, would allow himself to walk around injured if he could do something about it.

To this, Yashamaru only waves a hand half-heartedly. "The worst of my injuries have been healed. I'm not going to waste my energy over flesh wounds that will have healed in a week or so. A little pain is good sometimes," he remarks, his voice taking on an odd, whimsical note. "It lets you know that you're still alive."

Not really being possessed of a poetic bent, the Kazekage has nothing to say to this. For a few moments, silence is maintained between the two men.

"What exactly is going on with him?" the Kazekage asks when the silence clears, exasperated. As it is, he has next to no insight into Gaara's mindset. Though neither of them can claim to be mind-readers, Yashamaru's in a far better position than him to perhaps know some reason _why _Gaara's doing this. If it's something they can fix… _Please let it be something that can be fixed. At least then…_

At this, a spasm passes over Yashamaru's drawn face. "Any number of things," he points out softly. "An inability to sleep was inevitably going to lead to emotional problems. Add to that the fact that Gaara is isolated, has no friends, and is ostracized by virtually the entire village. And don't—" his voice hardens "—don't forget the fact that Gaara is constantly accompanied by a voice whispering in his head, urging him to commit acts of violence. I think a great many things are "going on" with your son, Kazekage-sama."

The part about the Shukaku acting as a voice in Gaara's head doesn't surprise him. Yashamaru had already told him about it, and the last two hosts had experienced it as well. The Shukaku isn't the sort of bijuu that's content to let its host (or anyone else, for that matter) forget that it's there. It wants everyone to acknowledge it, to the point of having told Suna its name and propagating the old wive's tale that it had once been a human priest—a drunk priest, appropriately enough, given its perpetually intoxicated demeanor when manifesting.

What throws him instead is the increasingly undeniable reality that it's all going down the tubes. "Yashamaru, this _can't _go on," he says, the irritation gone from his voice to be replaced by something he doesn't care to identify.

Yashamaru looks up abruptly, his elbow balanced on the kitchen table and his fingers splayed across his uninjured check. For a moment, something like pity crosses his face, brief and elusive as green shoots in the winding dunes. Then, his eyes harden 'til they're more like glass than flesh. "I'm well aware of that, Kazekage-sama," he responds, the picture of politeness, but his voice is cool. "But I'm not the one who has to decide what needs to be done."

-0-0-0-

He stalls them for as long as he can, the council, the daimyo and everyone else who's urging him to do something about it. He stalls them, and prays (_Here I am, praying again when I believe in no god)_ without much hope that maybe things will get better. That maybe Gaara will stop attacking the villagers, that he won't endanger Suna to the point that he, the Kazekage, has to take action.

But then, the Kazekage bears witness to the tail-end of an attack for himself.

Though the only light is the full moon above, the crimson blood glitters on the ground. The victim, an adolescent boy, is scrambling away from the sand, sporting lacerations and black bruises and the terror of one who has come face-to-face with death.

That's not what the Kazekage notices.

What stops him cold is the glimpse he gets of Gaara's face as he sends the sand after this latest prey.

He has up to now had the image in his mind of Gaara as a timid child. A shy, maladapted, frail little boy who barely seems like one who holds the spirit of the sand within him and is destined to be the living weapon that defends Sunagakure. He holds that stuffed bear he's so fond of to his chest as though it will shield him from all the unkind words and glances sent his way.

That child bears no resemblance to the creature the Kazekage lays eyes on now.

Gaara doesn't look like a child, surrounded by swirling, scouring sand. Lip curled back, eyes wide open and burning with a banked fire, he looks nothing like that shy boy his father remembers. It's as though another face has been superimposed on his own. The face of someone the Kazekage has seen before. An animal. A monster. The last host of the Shukaku, driven down to murderous madness before her death.

It's a slap in the face.

And he has no idea when it happened.

(And at last he admits it.)

_Something has to be done._


	6. Strictly Off the Record

_Strictly Off the Record_

* * *

The darkness is nearly complete, broken only by the weak glow of a full moon half-shrouded by wispy clouds and the ubiquitous sand swirling in the sky high above the village. A few muffled voices can be heard in the apartments up above, but for the most part, the village has settled down for the night. The only places open at this time of night are the 24-hour grocery stores and the bars.

Lost in though and needing fresh air too much to stay in the office, the Kazekage easily melts into the pitch-black shadows—and it's not like anyone would see him if he didn't want them to. As it is, the solitude doesn't grant him a great deal of power.

Gaara lashed out again earlier this evening, all but demolishing a child's playground and putting several of the children present there in the hospital—Yashamaru intervened before things could go any further. There were no fatalities this time, but that hardly matters. One more attack makes the issue of what to do about him even more urgent. It can't be put off anymore.

_What to do about him?_

_I can't put this off any longer._

_But just what am I supposed to do?_

In the past, the last two jinchuuriki hosts also lost control this way. They were able to last for a few years, eleven in the case of the first host, twelve in the case of the second, learning to use the sand and harness the bijuu's great power in the defense of the village. But eventually, they snapped. Having the Shukaku's stamina helped them cope with the insomnia thrust upon them, but eventually sleep loss, isolation, and the overwhelming power and responsibility granted them proved too much. They broke, and turned on the very village they were meant to protect. The bijuu was extracted from them and they died.

Neither of these hosts had been so compatible with the bijuu's chakra as Gaara supposedly is. Neither of them were made jinchuuriki before birth or even as small children. The decision hat was made once it was clear that they had lost control was, the Kazekage gets the impression, an easy one. They were adults, grown shinobi, not closely connected to the Kazekage of the time—after all, none of the former leaders of this village had family. They were spared having to choose their child, or their sibling, or their niece or nephew to be the Shukaku's host. When hope was lost and it came time to put the Shukaku back in its teapot, they could make the decision easily, knowing that the bijuu would not longer menace their village and that they wouldn't have to spill the blood of their kin to do so.

No matter what the threat towards the village, the idea of killing his son seems to be the one that has at last caused him to question exactly what he's been doing.

_Sending him to be with his mother… I suppose he might like that. _On some of the occasions that he's visited Yashamaru's house (growing less and less frequent over the months), the Kazekage's caught Gaara staring at that photo of Karura Yashamaru keeps out on a table in the living room. There's no particularly overwhelming emotion on his face, but the echoes of longing in his cataract-looking eyes tells a story that needs no words. _It's only natural for a child who has never known his mother to adore her. In the absence of reality he idealizes her. Would it really be so unkind…_

Yes, it would be. _I've never cared about being unkind before, not when I had a goal in mind. _The ends justify the means, or at least they're supposed to. It was supposed to be worth it to make a jinchuuriki host out of his son, supposed to be a sacrifice that _ensured _Suna's security, not endangered it. All his hopes were that Gaara would be able to grow into a stable man, a capable shinobi, that he wouldn't end up having to scrap his plans and start over. _The chances of that happening grow more remote with every day._

_I suppose that what I really wanted was for him to be different. For him not to fall into the same madness that his predecessors had. But how was he supposed to be different? How was he supposed to be any different than them?_

His next course of action is painfully clear. _Subdue Gaara and extract the Shukaku, and start over. Wait a few years before choosing the next host, so the wounds can heal. It's what my predecessors would have done, and have done. It's what I'd do in a heartbeat, if I had the steel for it. _It's clear what he has to do, and yet he hesitates.

_It's one thing to kill an adult shinobi with not ties to you, knowing that you do so for the good of your country. I guess it's another to kill your six-year-old son._

The Kazekage has had many roles in his life. Son, shinobi, sensei. Husband, father, Kazekage. One by one, those roles started to go away. His parents died, and he could no longer call himself 'son.' His students grew up and were no longer in need of his teaching, and he could no longer call himself 'sensei.' Karura died, essentially at his own hands, and he could no longer call himself 'husband' (Though with her death he gained a designation of dubious merit—'widower.'). He can no longer even cal himself 'shinobi'—as Kazekage, he is both less and more than simply a shinobi.

The only two that remain anymore are 'Kazekage' and 'Father.' It seems that the only way he can live up to all the duty and responsibility attached to the former is by discarding all the feeling and sentiment that comes with the latter.

There are so many reasons why he should let go of sentimentality and simply go ahead with the extraction. _What's the life of one to the life of thousands? Of tens of thousands? Of more than three hundred thousand? Is the life of one really equal to the lives of every man, woman and child in Kaze no Kuni? _

_Eventually, the Shukaku itself may appear. If this goes on, and that happens, there really will be no turning back. _What future does this nation have if the Shukaku ravages it? Everyone who has his ear on this matter, bar one, tells him the same thing, what he doesn't have to be told: that Sunagakure is in danger, that Sunagakure is losing revenue, that the economy is slumping and inflation is rising (and this despite the curtailment on the mint), that the military forces are being thinned, and that there is only one thing that can make even some of this better.

There is no future for Sunagakure the way things are going now. He thinks of Temari and Kankuro, who can't help but hear the stories, who have lately grown warier of the streets about them. In past times, the Kazekage might have been thankful for the fact that they were finally showing themselves to be more attentive to their surroundings. Given that they've started to learn the basics of ninjutsu—Baki's been happy to have something to do other than baby-sit them—it does them well to start paying attention to the world around them. But when the one they're looking out for is their own brother, whom they've barely seen and spoken to…

Compared to that, the reasons why he shouldn't go ahead seem thin indeed. At the same time, they predominate, carrying as much weight in his mind as anything else.

He has told himself, more than once during the past few months as it all fell apart, that to simply have Gaara killed would be to undo and make worthless the sacrifice of everyone who has ever died as a result. The civilians who had never seen death coming, the shinobi who couldn't scramble out of the way fast enough, the mother who had died with her eyes open and a squirming infant nestled in the palms of her hands—all of them lost their lives, and the least he could give them in repayment was success. The last he could give them was the assurance that even if they were dead, at least their children would be safe. At least the place that they had called home would be safe.

What are the lives they lost supposed to be worth, if the cause they lost them to falls apart?

And the Kazekage supposes that, considering his wife's been dead for more than six years now, maybe it's nothing more than an exercise in futility to still be trying to prove her wrong on something she asserted when she was still alive. But try he does, to refute the claim: _"This isn't going to work." _Try he does to make her death more than simply the result of his own naïveté.

_Now it looks like I can't even do that. _The darkness shifts, growing less profound—the moon has been abandoned by its shroud of clouds. _And here I find myself losing an argument with my wife, six years after she's died. You always had to have the last word, didn't you, Karura?_

_Though I suppose that in this case, maybe you had a point._

The moment any memory of Karura leaves him, in its place are memories of Gaara. Gaara, before the trouble began, before his father could hardly bear to be around him for all the questions that rose in his mind whenever he saw him.

The child would sit some way away from him. He'd have his stuffed bear or some other toy, or maybe one of the picture books Yashamaru used to teach him how to read—too vibrant, too colorful, so bright as to hurt the eyes—held up to his chest, as if he felt he needed something between himself and his father. As if he felt he needed a shield that the sand could not provide.

Though Gaara's outgrown the stage of not talking to anyone but Yashamaru, the Kazekage still has a hard time getting more than a few stilted sentences out of the boy whenever he sees him. Mostly, father and son instead find themselves locked in a supremely awkward staring match, the Kazekage as ever bereft of any idea of what to say to him, and Gaara with his sand swirling about him, both protective and menacing. It was anyone's guess as to who would look away first.

He has to confess that most of the time he has no idea what's going through Gaara's mind. It's easy to pick up on loneliness and sadness—these things, as expressed by Gaara, take on an aura as solid and palpable as the sand that trails behind him. _The life of a jinchuuriki is a lonely one. I knew that when I condemned him to it. _You wouldn't have to be an expert at discerning moods and picking apart human psychology to know that he's lonely.

And yet, those pale eyes lack the one thing that usually makes a human so easy to read: openness. Other children his age, even the ones training to become shinobi, fast becoming adept with kunai and chakra strings, still have such open, guileless eyes that it's easy to catch them in a lie, easy to tell what they're feeling. The Kazekage can always tell when Kankuro's lying to him or when Temari's trying to project a happier image than what she actually feels. Those two are open books. But with Gaara, unless he's confronted with overwhelming emotion, it's like he's hit a wall. There's no way to tell what's going on beneath the surface of his skin.

_If I did know, it would be easier. If I had some clue as to his motivation, why he's doing this, it might be easier. I'd be able to know if it's something that can be fixed._

_But it probably wouldn't make any difference. When someone goes about killing half the people who cross their path, their motivations don't matter very much._

Despite all this, despite all the trouble that's happened because of him, he doesn't hate him. Gaara is what he was made; he had no choice in the matter but to become what he is. He's not a monster, only a child, a frail, fragile child, possessed by more power than he can control and living in his own waking nightmare world. The Kazekage knows that maybe, maybe he shouldn't have expected him to be different.

He remembers the smile he's so rarely seen, and his heart is a heavy one. _The shy boy and the killer. His mother's child and the child of the desert. They are the same person, one and the same. I know. That's how I made him._

There are only two choices, it seems. To either spare Gaara or have him killed. With one choice he acts on feeling and emotion, and potentially dooms an entire nation. With the other, he spares Kaze potential destruction or assimilation by some other, grasping nation, and spills the blood of his own child. _There must be something else. Those can't be the only options._

Locking him up wouldn't do any good. Eventually Gaara will grow so powerful that stone walls won't be enough to trap him when he's truly bent on freedom, and if pressed far enough, the Shukaku could manifest. Nor would keeping him in a comatose state—that's not going to solve the problem, and the Shukaku could well use the opportunity break loose.

But surely there must be something else, something to forestall an assassination…

_Well, maybe there is something._

Suddenly, a terrified howl echoes through the empty streets from nearby. The Kazekage looks up, broken out of his thoughts, just in time to watch a man slump down a wall, a huge, dark stain glittering on the stone where his back was.

_Again?_

_I must be getting old, not to have spotted that before._

A commotion arises and is quickly hushed, the witnesses scattering to avoid death. Gaara walks away, visibly downcast; for once, his emotions after an attack are clear. It's not until Gaara has nearly passed him that he notices his father standing there, looking at him. Gaara looks up, startled, pale eyes wide open.

He could kill him right now. The Kazekage knows that he could kill him in the moment, where he stands, and put an end to all of this. Gaara hasn't been trained in how to use that sand efficiently; its speed is nothing compared to what his father can accomplish with his gold dust. It wouldn't have to be painful. It would be quick, the simple matter of snapping the boy's neck in the right place so that he'd die without ever knowing what had hit him. That would be a far more merciful death than what awaits him if they go ahead with the extraction of the bijuu.

He doesn't. Moments pass, his heart growing near-still, and he doesn't move a muscle.

Instead, he glares down at him, and wishes more than anything that Gaara would just, for once, try to explain himself.

_Say something. Anything. Explain why you're doing this. I don't care if it makes any sense or not. Say that you were frightened, that you were angry, that you didn't understand. Anything would be better than your intolerable silence on this matter._

_If you pled for your own life, it would at least give me some pretext to stay your execution._

But Gaara doesn't say anything. He doesn't explain himself, and he doesn't plead, or beg. He turns away, lip trembling, face contorted in pain and flinching as if struck. Shoulders bowed, the child trudges away, back in the direction of Yashamaru's house. The omnipresent sand trails behind him. He's soon swallowed up by the darkness.

For himself, the Kazekage starts back towards his office.

He has an idea, and arrangements he needs to make. _And God help me if I'm wrong._


	7. Last Resort

_Last Resort_

* * *

"_Inform the councilors that I want them present for a meeting at five o'clock in the evening tomorrow. Tell Yashamaru that he needs to be there too. And have the people on this list report to me at three in the afternoon."_

"_Yes, sir."_

There's something the Kazekage's noticed about the advisory council and its members over the years. When they still served as active shinobi, they were men of action. They were the sort who could make a decision quickly and carry it out with equal speed. It's hard to believe these were once the same men who led troops into battle and could come up with sane decisions and sound battle strategies on the quick, to listen to them now.

He's not sure what it is. Maybe the years of sedentary life has robbed the councilors of their capacity to come to a consensus quickly. But what he's come to realize over the years is that these men are incapable of coming to a conclusion without arguing about it for hours on end. They debate, they squabble, they argue about things that aren't even tangentially on topic for the meeting at hand, and they resent all attempts to keep them on topic. Meetings that ought to take fifteen minutes at the most often end up running longer than an hour; it's ridiculous.

However, the fact that the councilors also often tend to forget that their leader is even in the room with them gives the Kazekage time to think.

"Why aren't you stopping him?" a councilor, Goza by name, demands of Yashamaru, glaring at the medic. It's obvious to whom Goza is referring. "You're the boy's caretaker; can't you control him?!"

Yashamaru has never been present for a council meeting before—usually, the only people allowed in the council chamber while the council is in-session is the Kazekage, the councilors, and, when need be, the councilor's aides—and he sits, uncomfortable, in one of the high-backed stone chairs. "Gaara is a child, not a dog," Yashamaru points out defensively. "I can't control him the way you control an unruly beast."

He's roundly ignored, and the room descends into cacophony once more.

While the council argues amongst itself, the Kazekage goes over plans in his head. He's recruited several dozen ANBU and jonin to stage an evacuation starting at two in the morning tomorrow. It's estimated that it will take at least eighteen hours to get everyone out of the village. Now if he can just keep Gaara from noticing what's going on…

"What was it the daimyo said in his last letter?" Kouhei asks, grimacing hideously and rubbing his forehead. "Funding to the village will be cut if our profits continue to slump!"

"If the village's standing forces continue to dwindle, Sunagakure will be weakened beyond hope of recovery!" Goza shouts. "We _must _have a trump card when bargaining with the other nations; something _has _to be done about the Shukaku!"

At this point, Ryusa, another councilor, speaks up, far more calmly than Goza; as a whole, he's one of the few members of the council who almost never loses his composure. However, given the views he tends to espouse, that isn't always a good thing. "Since the jinchuuriki is useless, we'll simply have to rely on the development of new jutsus and the gold trade to keep the village afloat. As for Gaara…"

The hard tone in Ryusa's voice makes it clear where he's going with this. Yashamaru stiffens, his jaw locking up, and the Kazekage decides that this is just as good a time as any to cut Ryusa and the rest of them off before they can start trying to impress upon him the importance of having Gaara "eliminated"—again.

"Gentlemen." The Kazekage stands, and some of the councilors blink as though they've just now noticed that he's in the room with them. "I have already made my decision as to what to do with Gaara." A couple raise their voices, but he raises his hand to silence them. "I have made my decision. The discussion is closed. You all will receive an evacuation notice some time tomorrow; I expect you to obey it. This meeting is adjourned."

Hopefully that will satisfy them for now. Judging by the way some of them nod among themselves as they leave, they seem to have taken his vague instructions as a decision in favor of assassination; either way, they seem satisfied that their leader's finally stopped waffling over what to do with his wayward son. Yashamaru remains seated even as the chamber starts to empty. Going by the strained look around his mouth and eyes, having listened to all the concerns raised by the councilors, having listened to them point out the daimyo's "concerns", he seems to have grasped the reality of the situation Suna (and Gaara) finds itself in.

_Good. I don't think he'd realize the gravity of the situation unless he could hear all this for himself._

"Yashamaru." He looks up, startled to be torn from the privacy of his own thoughts. The Kazekage motions for him to follow him out of the council chamber.

Once they're in the privacy of the Kazekage's office, the silence gives way to talk of the matter at hand. "I take it you understand the situation?" he asks, from his place standing at the window. The sun is setting over the dunes and the steppes and the cityscape of Sunagakure. Rooftops are doused in a ruby haze and the always bronze-tinted skies gleam gold. Hexagonal shadows scatter on the floor from the terracotta lattice over the window. The crowds have begun to thin out as shops close up for the night. They've started closing up a bit earlier than usual, of late.

Yashamaru hesitates before answering, the measure between his drawn breath and his words forming a palpable entity made up of all his negative emotions. "…Yes." Another pause comes; he can hear the moist, smacking sound of Yashamaru licking his lips. "Yes, sir, I do."

The Kazekage nods. "Good. Then you also understand the position I'm in, I suppose."

"Y-yes, sir." Yashamaru audibly swallows. "You're going ahead with the assassination, then?" He sounds sick. He sounds like a man on the edge of tears, distraught enough to break the age-old taboo against wasting water. And he sounds… He sounds vaguely disgusted. Or not vaguely, and the depth of his emotions can't be expressed through the thickness in his voice.

He turns to look at his brother-in-law briefly. "Not exactly." Yashamaru's face brightens like the sun deciding that maybe it won't set so soon after all. Somehow, that makes this even harder than it was going to be to start with. "I have a job for you."

Yashamaru frowns warily, instead of accepting it immediately as he might have done under less dubious circumstances. "What kind of job?"

The Kazekage sighs wearily, turning his gaze back out the window. "I need to know if the Shukaku can still berserk in its current state—and I need to know if Gaara still possesses the self-control needed to keep it from going berserk."

From the faint, blurry reflection in the glass, he can see Yashamaru nod. "If it could be proven that Gaara still has that much control over the Shukaku, that might be enough to convince the councilors that he doesn't need to be killed." He stiffens, starting to fiddle uncomfortably with the bandages at his wrist—a bloody memento, along with his bandage-wrapped forehead, of Gaara's last attack. "but where do I fit in to this?"

_I suppose he wouldn't come to that conclusion right away. But it would have been so much easier if he had. If he already understood what I need him to do…_

"I… I suspect that the only way we could discover if the Shukaku still has the capacity to berserk is to subject Gaara to a severe emotional shock. I don't think that simply trying to kill him would do the trick. Do you understand what your part in that is to be?"

If someone is to test Gaara's emotional control by stretching it to its breaking point, that tester absolutely has to be Yashamaru. No one else is close enough to Gaara for a psychological attack to make any impact. But at the same time, though it's the only way to forestall an otherwise inevitable assassination, he doesn't really like this plan. It seems such an underhanded thing to do to them both. But it's the only way. It has to be done. He finds it easy to quell any pangs of conscience when he considers the alternative.

Yashamaru shifts his weight; even with the window's vague reflection, the Kazekage can see dawning realization make its stamp on the medic's rapidly paling face. "But Gaara is just a child," he puts forward as a weak protest.

_Yes, I'm well aware of that. I could hardly fail to notice that about my own son. _He doesn't answer Yashamaru right away, instead staring beyond Yashamaru's reflection out to the wastelands beyond. He briefly catches sight of his own face in the glass, hard, stern, perhaps too much so. Perhaps trying to hide his own uncertainty about this and everything. He tears his eyes away from that familiar countenance.

With his kind, sentimental heart—how _does _such sentimentality thrive in the heart of an ANBU agent?—Yashamaru wouldn't want to subject Gaara to such a test. With the love he feels for his nephew, Yashamaru wouldn't want to do anything that would carry even a remote risk of breaking him emotionally. Well, he can understand that. The risks that come with such a plan make _him_ want to balk. But it's the only way.

And there's another danger, as well. As the Kazekage recalls, Konohagakure and certain other villages use seals on their jinchuuriki that are designed for the express purpose of keeping the bijuu locked up tight. If the bijuu fully manifests, that means that the seal has failed and the jinchuuriki is dead. However, that's not the case for the seal used on the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi, Shukaku.

The seal used in Sunagakure was designed to allow the Shukaku to fully manifest without killing its host in the process—after all, it's pretty hard for a jinchuuriki to be a living weapon if said jinchuuriki dies every time they unleash the full extent of their power on the enemy. The seal functions as an open-and-shut valve. It opens when the jinchuuriki performs the False Sleep jutsu to unleash the Shukaku and shuts when the Shukaku runs out of chakra (It could also, theoretically, shut when the Shukaku decided it was done rampaging and killing things, but to the best of the Kazekage's knowledge, that's never actually happened).

However, there is a risk to allowing the Shukaku to manifest under anything other than completely controlled circumstances. Chiyo and other authorities on sealing have studied the past jinchuuriki hosts after they let the Shukaku rampage without first having utilized the False Sleep jutsu, and they surmised that this causes the host's personality to fragment and be absorbed by the bijuu's massive consciousness at an accelerated rate. If the Shukaku rampages out of control for too long, by the time it's subdued and the host is allowed dominance again, there could very well be nothing left of the host's original personality.

"A psychological attack will have to be accompanied by a physical one," Yashamaru presses. "It won't carry much weight otherwise. These days, when Gaara is confronted by a physical attack the sand does not just defend him; it aim to kill the attacker. I could be killed before I could even administer the "test" to him. There would be left no one…" His voice cracks and he swallows hard "…no one who would be willing to care for him. Sir, he really is _just _a boy."

"He's not _just _a boy!" the Kazekage snaps, glaring at Yashamaru out of one eye and damning the pleading note in the younger man's voice in his mind. "He is the jinchuuriki of Sunagakure. Even as he is now he has obligations that go beyond that of the ordinary shinobi, as do I, and as do you. I can not afford to treat him as I would a normal child, as I would if he were both my son and not the Shukaku's host. Nor can you afford to treat him as though he was both your nephew and a normal boy. This _must _go forward, regardless of the consequences."

Yes, he's aware that if Yashamaru dies, Gaara will be left without a caretaker, and that even if he doesn't, it's unlikely that Yashamaru would be able to continue as his caretaker (Which for Yashamaru might qualify as a worse fate). The Kazekage doesn't relish the thought of Yashamaru dying. They've never been friends, but he does respect him. Yashamaru's a good medic, a good ANBU agent, and he's tried his best to be a good parent to his troubled charge. If Yashamaru dies, he loses a medic, a member of ANBU, and the only shinobi in the village who is both qualified and willing to take care of Gaara. _I can't afford to lose any more shinobi than I already have over this. We lose enough to missions gone wrong, to illness and injury. But if this can keep me from having to kill him…_

"When you confront him, speak of his mother. Say whatever you feel you have to in order to make this a proper test of his control. If he does not lose control even then, I will refrain from having him dealt with."

Yashamaru's demeanor changes, eyes growing ever sharper and face waxing pale until he more resembles one of the dolls sold in the shops below than a man. "My sister," he echoes softly, abstracted. Then, he demurs in a low voice, "I don't think that's wise, sir."

What Yashamaru gets in response is the "pleasant" sight of his leader shooting a cold glower in his direction. "I know damn well it isn't wise," he retorts, curling his lip. "Nothing's more likely to set him off than that. I'm well aware that he adores his mother. But as a jinchuuriki, he must be able to endure even that loss!"

They're both aware, intimately aware in this moment, of the insanity at the heart of what he's suggesting be done. Subjecting such a young child to this test carries a high likelihood of failure, and even if it does not, will change the boy's relationship with his home village drastically. But they're both equally aware also that if this plan isn't carried out, all hope of sparing Gaara death will be lost. No words need be passed to know that.

Yashamaru nods, jaw set, glassy gray eyes gleaming with an odd, almost feverish light.

With that, the atmosphere in the office goes from tense to strictly businesslike. "Good. I have to ask you not to go ahead with it until at least ten tomorrow night, or later, depending on how long it takes to evacuate all the villagers and get them a safe distance from the village itself. There will be nine groups; those in charge of each group have been instructed to light a signal flare when they're safely away from the village. I will be here, in case things go wrong. Now, if you could keep Gaara from noticing…"

Yashamaru shakes his fair-haired head. "I don't think I'll have to do that much, sir. Gaara has barely left his room at all since he came home last night. That's how it usually is after one of his "attacks." If he tries to leave before then, I'll just ask him to stay inside."

The Kazekage nods, crossing his arms and turning his gaze back to the window. "If you understand, then you're dismissed."

Yashamaru's light footsteps barely echo across the floor as he starts to leave.

"Yashamaru?"

The footsteps stop.

"If… If you do die, tell your sister that she was right."

"Sir?" The suggestion of confusion laces the word.

"She'll understand."

* * *

I know it seemed like, in the anime, Gaara attacked those kids at the playground and was attacked by Yashamaru within the span of a few hours (at least it seemed that way to me), but the information we got in chapter 547 necessitated me altering that a bit to fix the problems with continuity and plausibility that created. Namely, the issue of the evacuation. The fact that there was anyone around when Gaara tried to give that kid ointment means that the evacuation either hadn't taken place yet or wasn't finished (And somehow, I don't think shinobi would actually give anyone a choice about evacuating or not evacuating).

Now, the total evacuation of Sunagakure's going to take more than a couple of hours. If you go by the Naruto wiki Kaze no Kuni's got the smallest population of the five main nations, but my guess is that Suna's got the largest population in relation to the five main hidden villages themselves; after all, there's not a whole lot of places in Kaze no Kuni where anyone can actually live comfortably. And since there's no cars, everyone who's evacuating will be doing so on foot, while carrying the provisions (food, water, and such) that they'll need to survive for as long. They'd have to stagger who's evacuated when to keep from clogging up the gates, and would have to get far enough away from the village that they'd be relatively out of danger if the Shukaku manifested. My guess is that all of this will take at least eighteen to twenty hours, if not longer.

And as for Gaara not noticing the mass migration (even if he is in his room the whole time) and the fact that the village is mysteriously empty once he does decide to venture out of the house? He's a mentally unstable six-year-old with a demonic voice in his head. Anything's possible.


	8. Failsafe

_Failsafe_

* * *

It's sometime between midnight and one in the morning when the last of the signal flares carves a bright white sliver out of the night sky. _From the well, eight miles southwest. Yashamaru will have seen it too_. So it's time, then.

The Kazekage sighs, and with a quick succession of hand seals activates the Third Eye.

He had developed this jutsu during the last war, when there was a need to flush out the enemy and track their movements. It took several months of memorizing the anatomy of the eye and how all of its parts work, and figuring out how to "see" through the optical construct, but eventually, he did manage to make it work. Just about anyone else would have had to manifest their raw chakra and condense it in to the shape of a functioning human eye, but thanks to judicious use of the Magnetism release he was able to get around that.

That said, there is one major downside to the Third Eye that he can name: he can only see what's playing out before the construct.

About half an hour before the last signal flare was lit, Gaara left his home and started further south, in the direction of the southeastern gate. However, he did not leave the village .Given that Gaara has never actually left the village before and has never shown much inclination too, this isn't terribly surprising—though it is a relief. Instead, he climbed a fire escape and took up a perch on the roof of an apartment building, staring off into the distance.

A simple order running through his mind sends the Third Eye out in the direction of that apartment building where Gaara was last seen. The Kazekage hopes that Gaara hasn't moved since a half-hour earlier; close by, where he can readily observe the unfolding situation, is where the Eye needs to stay. _If Gaara's moved again it may take too long to find him Yashamaru might have already started; it might already be too late…_

_No. There he is. _Gaara hasn't vacated his perch. The only motion of movement he's made at all is to curl his knees up to his chest, and to hide his face behind splayed-out fingers. Judging by the lack of carnage, Yashamaru seems not to have found him yet.

The Kazekage directs the Eye to the shadows beyond the ledge, surrounding the electrical unit for the building. Yashamaru rarely opens a battle with a frontal assault; he prefers to attack his target from behind, trying to kill them while suffering as little damage and injury as he can manage. When he springs the trap, it will be from there.

He settles in for the wait, occasionally swiveling the Eye back towards Gaara to make sure the boy hasn't wandered off. The wind, already unusually mild for Kaze no Kuni, nearly drops off altogether, the air growing almost unbearably still.

After tonight, everything will change.

If Gaara passes the test that he is unknowingly about to endure, he won't survive it unscathed. He'll be alive, his life spared and the extraction of the bijuu deemed unnecessary, but he won't be the same. Robbed of one of the only constants in his life (_Mother's love, the only thing he's sure of anymore_), he'll have changed. Gaara will have become harder, colder, numb—one step closer to being a proper shinobi, but years too early. It's what anyone does when their life's tugged out from under their feet, unless the alternative comes to pass.

Just as likely is the possibility that Gaara will fail. His father's been telling himself that he won't, that he'll be fine and they won't have to… to kill him, but really, isn't he just as likely to fail? To break down and scream and wail? Yashamaru's right, he's uncomfortably aware; Gaara, for all his power, is also an emotionally fragile boy. Maybe, he's hoping, he won't break down so badly that the Shukaku shows itself, the true herald of failure in this endeavor, but there are still so many ways this could go wrong.

_I never said this was a particularly good idea. Just that it was the only way to stave off all the voices insistent on Gaara's death. It's a desperate plan. I'll admit that now. It's the only way. That often seems to be the language of desperate measures, 'the only way.'_

_Now please, Gaara, do not make all of this effort worth nothing._

Suddenly, the shadows at Gaara's back shake and quiver. The Eye pulls back so he can watch the proceedings unnoticed and unhindered. The dull glint of metal catches the light of the swollen moon. Yashamaru has arrived on the scene at last.

Gaara remains oblivious as ten kunai hover in the air, held up by glistening, barely visible chakra strings. He remains oblivious as they rocket towards him, sharp and silent. Gaara only becomes aware of the peril at his back when the familiar wall of sand rises to defend him, and the kunai draw back, still attached to their chakra threads.

If the Kazekage didn't know for sure that it was Yashamaru attacking, he wouldn't be able to tell who was controlling the kunai. Yashamaru's made sure that he's unrecognizable to anyone who looks upon him, having donned the standard uniform of the village, veil, face mask and dark glasses. Barely an inch of skin has been left exposed.

Evidently, Gaara can't tell it's him either.

What happens next goes by so fast that it seems more like the passage of a dream than a record of reality. A shadow of murder overtakes the child's face. The sand speeds towards Yashamaru. It curls around his body like the embrace of some great, formless beast. Then, the sand contracts. Blood flies through the air, hitting the ground, the wall, Gaara himself. The kunai, their threads broken, clatter to the rooftop. Yashamaru falls himself, collapsed against the electrical unit. He's covered in blood. He's not moving.

Suddenly, Gaara's face shifts from murderous to timid, frightened. He's saying something. The Kazekage, well-versed in reading lips, roughly interprets it as _'Who are you?! What do you want?!'_ The Kazekage bates his breath; if Yashamaru's already dead, the whole plan will fall apart.

Then, the boy moves forward.

His small hand tugs at the face mask, and pulls it away.

The Kazekage can hear Gaara's resulting howl from where he stands, several hundred yards away.

It all starts to go by so fast again. He can't make out what they're saying—Yashamaru is slumped and slurring with blood bubbling from his mouth; Gaara's choking through tears, his shaking hands at his eyes, his mouth. He needs to know what's going on, but for once he's glad that the Third Eye can't report any sound back to him; he's not sure that the sound of Gaara sobbing his lungs out is something he needs to be hearing (Knows it's not something he _wants _to hear).

Then…

_Explosive tags?_

_No, he wasn't supposed to do that._

For one moment, there is a blinding flash of light. Then, there is sand. Sand obscures his line of vision; no matter where he directs the Eye, he can't get past it, can't see what's going on.

But soon enough, the Kazekage finds he doesn't need the Eye.

An enormous shadow blocks out the light of the moon. Next comes an ear-shattering, ravenous howl, the wall of sand, the great golden eyes. A monstrous form looms over the city, reborn and ready to wreak havoc.

There is no child.

Only the demon.

* * *

Yeah, this one's short. However, I think it being long would have defeated the purpose. And yeah, the title's pretty much irony in practice.


	9. Comes Tumbling Down

_Comes Tumbling Down_

* * *

Though the exact numbers vary depending on the quality of the gold and the composition of the sand, it is accepted that, on average, gold is roughly twelve times denser than sand. If you pick up a cup full of sand, it won't be all that heavy; however, if that cup was to be filled with gold instead, even gold dust, it would be more like picking up a leaden weight, but heavier still.

For all that, though, when the Shukaku breaks free of the attacks plied on it as though they're made of air, the Kazekage has to wonder exactly how that's supposed to help him.

All emotion, al feeling about what this means for the future (_what it means for Gaara_) has been shelved. It seems unimportant in the face of the enormous reality of what will happen if the Shukaku is not subdued, here and now, of what will happen if the beast if allowed to pass beyond the city walls. _Not even ten miles from here in any direction there are more than a hundred thousand people. I can't…_

Another wall of sand to dodge, to try to beat down, breaks off his train of thought.

The Shukaku wrenches yet another rabid howl from its throat; a glittering skein of sand hovers above it and for miles around it. Never constant, the sand cloud keeps shifting across the face of the moon, making the light flicker and the judgment of distances difficult at best. The air crackles with demonic chakra. The Kazekage tries to beat the beast down with another attack and not give away his location. For all that the Shukaku's a bijuu gone berserk, on the rampage, it does possess intelligence, and if it figures out where he is, he's done for.

_THUMP!_

There comes the crash of sandstone breaking and a building toppling to the earth.

_THUMP!_

He dives into an alleyway, trying to regain some semblance of his bearings. He's been at this for half an hour already and can't pretend to feel the same strength he'd had before those minutes flew away, no matter what lies the adrenaline pounding through his veins tries to feed him. His side stings, blood dripping down his leg—the cost of an early mistake, a stupid error but one that could have easily cost him his life had he not managed to avoid the rest of the bijuu's attack…

_THUMP!_

It is an accepted fact that there are few people living or who have ever lived who are capable of matching the power of a bijuu, let alone a bijuu in the habitat where it finds itself at its strongest. The Yondaime Kazekage of Sunagakure is not in any way, shape or form one of these people. At present, the only advantage he has over the Shukaku is the far greater weight of gold as opposed to sand. And even then, he can't afford to waste his energy by trying to combat the beast directly—a venture that would surely fail. The most he can do is try to beat it down, wearing it down and forcing it to expend its chakra more quickly in the attempt to shake him off. That's the only way to stop the Shukaku, by tiring it out.

Another roar, all drunken rage and wounded fury, fills his ears, deafening him for a few moments and leaving stars exploding beneath his eyelids. The Shukaku could be a few feet from him or a few miles; it doesn't matter when it screams at the top of its lungs. _Is it even slowing down at all? _the Kazekage wonders, listening to the crash of stone, to the tread of giant feet that makes the earth shake. _Is it even growing tired at all?_

In all likelihood, it's not. There's a time and a place for optimism, but in this situation it's best to assume that the Shukaku isn't tired—you can't judge a bijuu's energy levels by remotely the same scale as a human's. There are records that he has read, of how long it took the Sandaime to subdue the Shukaku the last time it went berserk during his tenure, but in the chaos of sand, stone and demonic chakra the details have slipped his mind, and he doesn't possess the Sandaime's stamina anyways, so what…

_THUMP!_

The tremors are coming closer.

_It's heading this way._

Behind the shifting skein of sand, the Kazekage can see that the moon still hangs high in the sky. It's hours yet before dawn will even be hinted at. He has two choices: prevail or die. Setting his jaw, trying to ignore the blood pounding in his ears, he steps out of the alley, and the battle resumes again.

-0-0-0-

A few hours later, the moon sinking downwards towards the cliffs and mesas, it's over.

More than a thousand villagers will find themselves homeless when they pass back through the gates, and God only knows the cost of the property damage. Reconstruction of the neighborhood the Shukaku demolished during its rampage will have to commence immediately; meanwhile, the shelters will be overflowing, and procuring temporary housing for them will be nothing shore of a logistical nightmare. Several electrical lines have been snapped, more than a dozen cisterns cracked, and mounds of sand all but covering smaller buildings that escaped the destruction. _At least it didn't get to any of the wells or the water towers. I'll have to get someone to make sure the pipes aren't damaged._

Winded, weary to the bones and starting to stagger just a bit with his steps, the Kazekage makes his way towards the epicenter of the devastation. Exhausted and discovering that the wound in his side wasn't quite as deep as he thought it was, he supposes he got off lightly. His picks his way through rubble, avoids the fallen electrical lines. The loose, inert sand shifts beneath his feet. Though he knows it no longer holds any power in its grains, whenever a newly-formed sand bank falls from a roof or a slab of sandstone, he stiffens, watching it tensely and preparing to defend himself. But it wouldn't do any good. He's completely spent.

It was maybe fifteen (twenty?) minutes ago when he started to notice the Shukaku falling apart. Its pace and the scope of its destructive power had been lagging for a while, but now, _chunks _of sand were falling off of it (And actually contributing to the demolishing of buildings by causing the roofs to collapse when particularly large chunks fell on them). Its hoarse, glass-shattering roars had dropped to pained moans that were more on line with the combined clamor of a crowd on a market day in spring—the weather is just mild enough to allow for the transportation of vegetables and sometimes even fruit.

And then, it started to collapse in earnest.

Rivers and waterfalls of sand cascaded through the streets and alleyways. The beast's great golden eyes dimmed and crumbled; it thrashed about and moaned before finally disintegrating entirely, its form lost to loose sand. The battle was over.

Strange, how not so much as a single gust of wind blusters through the empty streets. On nights like this, normally the howling would be all anyone can hear, but tonight, it's silent. Dead silent.

Finally, a small shape not stone or sand emerges from the pre-dawn darkness, curled like an unborn child still nursed in the womb; in a display only serving to emphasize his exhaustion, the Kazekage nearly trips over him before he realizes that he's found Gaara. He drops to his knees beside the motionless boy, all the breath hitching in his throat, never reaching his lungs. There is blood on the boy's forehead; his skin is cold as ice. For a moment, he's convinced that Gaara is dead.

It would, perhaps, be easier if Gaara died. No, he's positive that it would be easier if Gaara is dead. There would be no more attacks, no more letters from the Daimyo dropping ominous hints. People wouldn't be afraid to leave their homes to do business and live their lives. It's not an easy thing, to know that your own child is a menace, let alone the menace of an entire metropolitan area—even less easy to know that the child is a menace through little fault of his own, but that he is a menace all the same, a life-threatening one. If Gaara is dead, the Shukaku is dead with him. All they have to do is wait for the beast to resurrect, capture it, and keep it in the familiar tea kettle until such time as another suitable host can be found. Or perhaps they would scrap the jinchuuriki project altogether, citing the damage caused by the first three hosts, and simply hold the Shukaku captive.

It would be easier for everyone if Gaara was to die tonight. Safer for everyone, if he just died. There are no words to describe how easier and safer it would be for his father, but all the same, he derives no joy from the thought. Sweat bathing his palms, he tugs at the heavy scarf about Gaara's throat, and breathes a treacherous sigh of relief when he discerns a pulse. A weak, shallow pulse, but a pulse all the same. All the events that lead up to tonight will start again when he wakes. But for now, he's alive.

_He… He's not dead. Just unconscious._

This… This would be the first time Gaara has ever slept; it's certainly the first time he's ever bled. It would be a lie to say that the look on the boy's face is a peaceful one. Pale skin is devoid of all emotion, but the expression on Gaara's unconscious face is better described as blank than as peaceful. The look is one of oblivion, not of rest. He might have been able to pass for peaceful, if not for the thick, dark, crusting smear of blood on his left temple, still oozing sluggishly down the side of his face. That wholesale destroys the cheap façade.

Ignoring the ache in his back and shoulders, the Kazekage leans down and lifts Gaara up off of the ground. He's not done this, not held him like this since the boy was a newborn—_this has been a night of firsts for many things, though, so why not this too?_—and it registers to him as it often does, though very dimly this time, just how small Gaara is for his age. What exactly had Yashamaru been feeding him? Had the boy's food have any nutrients in it at all? And why is he thinking about something so trivial, after everything that's happened?

Small he may be, but Gaara is also a leaden weight in his father's arms, limp, unmoving, eyes screwed shut—shut, they look more than ever like a child had gotten into their mother's kohl and smeared it all over their eyes without her help—and the walk home will be a long, laborious one.

As the Kazekage walks back towards the Governmental Complex in silence, Gaara shows no sign of waking, and his thoughts wandering and racing, he makes plans.

Some time around dawn, he'll send messages out to the evacuation groups to tell them that it's safe to return to the village. To the group assembled at Mount Heda, six miles due north, an additional message will be sent, asking for Elder Chiyo to report to the Governmental Complex immediately upon returning to Sunagakure; Gaara's seal will need to be examined. Construction workers will need to be dispatched immediately to the devastated neighborhood and plumbers will be brought in to make sure none of the pipes have been damaged. At one in the afternoon, he'll convene a council meeting—if he didn't do it one of the councilors would, and it's better to appear ready and willing to discuss the next course of action…

Once back inside the Governmental Complex, he makes his way towards the second floor.

Long before the days of shinobi and daimyos, this building was used as the home and administrative center of the ruler of this city. The Complex has since been modernized and somewhat renovated. The ground floor consists of the kitchens and offices for shinobi to go to in order to pick up mission scrolls and turn in their reports. The second floor comprises residential apartments, few of whom are ever actually used—the rest remain boarded up. The third floor is given over to the Archives; the fourth, storage; and the fifth and top floor, the administrative center and offices. Nearby the Governmental Complex are the ID distribution center, one of the local jails and police stations, the ANBU headquarters, the main smithy where kunai, shuriken and the like are produced, and what is without a doubt the largest cistern in all of Suna. The hospitals, the Puppetry Corps headquarters and the Academy are further off, but this is, without a doubt, Sunagakure's nerve center.

The Kazekage picks his way past all of these outer buildings, sparing not a single glance for any of them. Weariness and the overwhelming urge to sleep tugs at his consciousness, but he instead mounts the stairwell inside and does not stop until he comes upon the bathroom his two elder children share, and then deposits Gaara, still unconscious, on the seat of the toilet.

It's not the day for the water to be on in the pipes; the water in the deep basin by the sink will have to do instead. Temari and Kankuro will just have to deal with a bloody washcloth and blood on the floor. They're not blind to the sorts of things that go on in this city; they've likely seen worse in their time. Bad enough to stock their medicine cabinet with square adhesive bandages, it seems. Good.

His work done, Gaara cleaned of blood and bandaged, what little energy that had been lurking in his fingers and around his eyes dissipates from him entirely. The sterile light washes out the little color in Gaara's skin and makes it seem as though his whole head is bleeding, as though his hair itself has blood for pigment instead of melanin. He looks like a life-sized doll that no one ever plays with.

Gaara doesn't know it, but he's being stared at, intently, wearily, heavily. The Kazekage remembers… He remembers so many things, crystallized in that one moment of revelation. The roaring of the Shukaku. Yashamaru's warnings. Karura's look of clarity, of knowing the future. Temari and Kankuro's terrified faces as a wall of sand reared up behind their brother. Gaara, slipping in and out of the crowds, with them but also distant, cordoned-off, separate.

(_The child wanders aimlessly. Walks well-trodden streets. Filches pistachios from a vendor. Pries off the half-open shells and pops them into his mouth, one by one, licking the salt from his lips languorously. Stares upward to check the time from the sun's progress through the sky. Blinks at the harsh light. Finds the shelter of a patch of shade, huddles down on the hard-packed earth and cries for no reason, cries upon end._)

This is what it's come to.

His heart is heavy as a water-logged corpse.

_This was nothing but a mistake._


	10. The Lines of Fear

Sorry for the long wait. The last month has been utter Hell; I haven't had a whole lot of time for this.

* * *

_The Lines of Fear_

* * *

As the night gives way to morning and the warmth of the air climbs back up to typical blistering midsummer heat, the weary residents of Sunagakure flood back into their bruised city. The Kazekage has no way to know how the villagers are reacting to the sight of destruction in their midst; he's been too busy sending for and dispatching various repairmen to go back to the place the Shukaku destroyed last night. The pale, stretched looks on the weather-beaten faces of the repairmen as they filed in and filed out of his office was enough to tell him what the rest of the village probably thinks.

"I must say that, as far as seal inspections go, I've certainly had _better_ accommodations."

Chiyo arrived at the Governmental Complex around nine in the morning. However, when told of why she had been summoned there, she insisted on going back to her house first for the proper supplies. _"The inspection, maintenance and reinforcement of a seal is very delicate business. I could botch the job thanks to not having exactly the equipment I need. Do you really want that?"_ As such, she's just arrived back.

Given that Gaara's still unconscious and thus vulnerable, the Kazekage decided against having him transported to the hospital. As such, the seal inspection is taking place with the unconscious Gaara having been placed on the kitchen table, hence Chiyo's griping. Leaning heavily against the soapstone countertop, the Kazekage figures it prudent not to answer and give her more ammunition. Tired and irritable and not approving of any of this at all, Chiyo's looking for an argument. And frankly, he's not in any mood for idle talk right now.

He wonders when Gaara will wake up, deliberately not contemplating the idea of him not waking up at all, the boy still gripped firmly in unconsciousness. It would probably be better for everyone if the child did _not _awaken while still lying on his back on the kitchen table with an old woman poking and prodding at his now-visible seal. But he's already been unconscious for several hours. Just how much longer is it going to be before Gaara awakens?

And just what is he going to be like when he does wake up?

The Kazekage rubs his forehead wearily. He still feels weak and tired from the battle of the night before, still feels as though the very fibers of his bones have been stretched and strained and left to dry in the sun like skins left out by a tanner. The moments that sneak in between giving orders to repairmen and coordinating meetings, those moments are consumed by one thought, and one alone. _What will he be like when he wakes up?_

When he sent the repairmen out this morning, the Kazekage told them to keep an eye out for any signs of a corpse. He doubts highly that Yashamaru survived detonating all those explosive tags, and even if by some incredibly unlikely circumstance he did, he certainly didn't survive the Shukaku manifesting practically right on top of him. Maybe at least the repairmen would find a corpse that could be cremated and put to rest, but no. They've found neither hide nor hair of Yashamaru.

Usually, the Kazekage would doubt that someone's actually dead unless he's brought back a body. But under the circumstances, there can be little doubt about it. Yashamaru is dead. When Gaara wakes, how will he have been changed by what he perceives as his caretaker's betrayal? With despair and despondency? With rage? Both, maybe? It seems too much to hope for that Gaara will be just the same as he was before, that he'll still be, though dangerous and unstable, a fundamentally good-natured little boy. No, that's far too much to hope for.

And now, now there are only two things left to do. _It would be so much easier if he had died. But still…_

The minutes drag on in silence. Chiyo pores over Gaara's activated, visible seal, painstakingly comparing the intricate lines and symbols to a graph she brought with her. In some places, she fills in vanished lines or darkens fading ones with sealing ink. In others, she summons chakra to her fingertips and presses her fingers down on certain parts of the seal. Occasionally, she takes Gaara's vital signs, frowning and clucking. A far-away look comes over her eyes. She seems to have forgotten that there's anyone else in this kitchen with her and the child—she honestly seems to have forgotten she's in a kitchen at all.

Then, there comes an injection of fresh life in this hollow, quiet space.

Kankuro and Temari tend to make a fair amount of noise when they bustle into places—though Baki's been teaching them the basics of ninjutsu, getting them ready for the Academy exams, the lesson of stealth doesn't appear to be one that really took (Or maybe Baki simply hasn't gotten around to it yet; he really can't be sure). It's much the same now; to someone with decades of experience as a shinobi, their childish footsteps sound clumsy and loud, even if they're far lighter than what could be expected of an adult civilian.

The pair crosses the threshold into the kitchen. Both are a touch pale, purplish shadows gathering beneath their eyes from what was doubtless a sleepless night. They were whispering to themselves beforehand, but stop abruptly when their wide eyes soak in the situation before them. Their reactions are rather different from one another's.

Temari stands stock-still and silent, her summer-green eyes passing from Chiyo, to Gaara, and to her father. Then, she hurriedly turns on her heel and heads up the stairs, face white and lip bitten; she'll not emerge from her room at all today. Kankuro, on the other hand, after a long moment's hesitation, strides over to the kitchen table where his brother lies prostrate and the old retired kunoichi does her work.

"Erm…" Kankuro fidgets, his eyes shooting from Gaara to Chiyo and back to Gaara. "…Is… Is he alright?" the boy asks awkwardly.

Chiyo doesn't look up from her inspection; instead, she puts her blue clay jar of sealing ink back in her bag and pulls out another small, earthenware jar, this one painted dull purple and labeled 'lacquer.' "that's that I'm trying to find out." Her tone, thought still rather tetchy, is significantly milder than anything else heard out of her thus far this morning. Shaking her drooping gray bangs out of her eyes, Chiyo takes a slip of thin, waxy paper out of her bag. She then looks at Kankuro, and frowns. "If you could go stand on my other side…"

Kankuro quickly obliges her. Though his skin's painted with apprehension and starting to drip with sweat (small wonder, since the air conditioning seems to be broken—again), his eyes gleam with interest. He clearly has no desire to be dislodged from his proverbial spectator seat.

After blowing on the sealing ink to dry it, Chiyo takes the sheet of waxy paper up in her hand. Balancing it on her fingertips, she charges the paper with her chakra. Then, she rests it on top of the seal.

Kankuro's eyes widen when the formerly white sheet of paper suddenly starts to glow a bright shade of lavender, casting dancing shadows on the walls. To the Kazekage, this doesn't really qualify as an occasion for widened eyes or looks of wonder. He surveys the scene dimly, feeling the wound at his side start to ache again. He can't remember at the moment if Chiyo did this during the initial sealing, but judging from the air of satisfaction conveyed through her brisk nod, this did what it was supposed to do. All is well, then. _I don't remember the sealing taking so long, though_.

The paper is stowed away in Chiyo's bag. She selects a brush from her brush set, the twin of the brush she used to apply the sealing ink, and starts to paint lacquer over the ink.

After a few moments of this, in which the boy seems to be wrestling with something behind his skin, Kankuro speaks up. "You're Chiyo-sama, aren't you?"

"That I am."

With that terse affirmation of her identity, Kankuro's face lights up in a smile and a beam. "Is it true that you once captured a whole castle with nothing but puppets?" he demands excitedly.

_Oh… That story again. _That story's one that has a tendency to be circulated around Sunagakure whenever someone wants to offer up an example of a legendary feat of puppetry. The formation of chakra strings is a basic skill that every prospective shinobi in Suna is taught, but Kankuro's been exhibiting a special interest in puppetry for a couple of years now; it seems inevitable that he would have heard that story before. He's probably been hearing it his entire life, just the way his father has; the Kazekage's never been able to positively affirm if the story of Chiyo taking down a castle with nothing but puppets is actual fact or exaggeration, but he does know that whatever she did, she did it as a young woman during the First War, before he was born.

A small, nostalgic smile floats over Chiyo's lined face. "They were very special puppets I did it with—I've not seen craftsmanship on par with them since. But yes, yes I did."

Kankuro's grin only widens. "That's so cool! How many did you have?"

"Ten, child. That's the most any puppeteer can wield at once, after all."

The young boy tilts his head a bit, frustration flitting over his tanned skin. "I can't get my chakra strings to hold on to a puppet for more than a couple of seconds." Kankuro looks up at her out of his eyelids, clearly sensing an opportunity ripe for the taking. "Will you help me with it?"

"Kankuro." At this, the Kazekage lifts his voice to send Kankuro out of the room, frowning deeply all the while. There's a fine line between being confident enough to reach for what you want and just being entirely too forward, and Kankuro's just crossed it. And considering what Chiyo's doing at the moment, he really shouldn't be bothering her to start with…

But then, Chiyo holds up a hand, clearly meant to silence him. Though still deeply dubious about this, the Kazekage holds his tongue for now, if only to see what Chiyo will do. Not looking at Kankuro, still dabbing lacquer over the sealing ink on Gaara's exposed belly—it's become entirely too easy to forget the boy's still there—she says to her little admirer, "Alright, boy. I'll teach you to handle puppets, if you can answer me this riddle," she lays out whimsically. "'I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.'"

"Tomorrow," Kankuro answers promptly. Chiyo stares at him laying down her brush. The Kazekage's lip twitches. While Kankuro does love his little puppets, he also loves riddles.

Chiyo's lips tighten in a frown. Evidently she hadn't actually expected Kankuro to answer the riddle correctly. "'At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen.'"

"The stars."

"'All about, but can not be seen, can be captured, can not be held, no throat, but can be heard.'"

"That's _easy_. It's the wind."

"'I drive men mad for love of me, easily beaten, never free.'"

"You're hedging!"

"Answer it."

The fourth riddle, it seems, is the one that Kankuro just can't answer. "I don't know that one," he admits reluctantly, shrugging.

"It's gold," his father supplies wearily. "The answer is gold." He remembers; that riddle had been a favorite of his uncle's, a merchant. The man had muttered it, astonished, the first time it had become clear that his nephew could make gold move without touching it.

Chiyo attempts to go back to her work as though nothing happened, but Kankuro will have none of that. "Hey!" he exclaims indignantly. "I answered your riddle! You didn't say anything about the other ones. Come on, Chiyo-sama, you promised."

She waves her prosthetic hand to quiet him. "Alright, alright, if only to make you quit your yapping. You keep learning from whoever's teaching you now. It may be a long time, but eventually I'll call you over. Then we'll see just how serious you _really _are about this." Kankuro grins and nods; she laughs, low and wheezing. "Good. Now leave me be."

That being said, Chiyo dabs on the last of the lacquer. She summons chakra to her fingertips one last time and probes the seal, gnawing at her lip in concentration. Then, her hands form a long succession of seals. In her youth, it probably would have taken her all of two seconds to form these seals. But her flesh hand is old and arthritic, and the wooden prosthetic that's taken the place of her long-gone right forearm can not compare with flesh for dexterity. She murmurs something under her breath, and the seal vanishes from sight.

With that, the brush set and the jar of lacquer go right back into her bag. Chiyo jerks Gaara's shirt back down over his pale belly, and briefly reaches over to peel back one of the adhesive flaps of the bandage on Gaara's forehead. Her eyes narrow shrewdly in a look the Kazekage doesn't think he likes, before replacing the bandage, smoothing the adhesive over pale, pliant skin. Then, she slings her bag over her shoulder. "The seal is repaired," she says evenly, turning to go. "And that's quite an interesting mark your boy's left on himself."

_Mark? What mark?_

Kankuro frowns and leans over his brother, prodding him on the shoulder gently. "If his seal's fixed," he wonders aloud, "why isn't Gaara awake?"

"Who knows?" Chiyo's uneven footsteps echo against the stone floor. The back door slams behind her.

With that, and completely forgetting that Kankuro's still in the kitchen, the Kazekage goes over to Gaara, frowning and wondering what Chiyo meant by "interesting mark" under the bandage on his forehead. It's just a wound he picked up during last night's battle, isn't it?

He lifts the bandage, and in the moment of sight and revelation that follows, it's as if the whole world stands still and all he can hear is his heartbeat pounding, _thud-thud-thud_, in his ears.

What he had thought was just some wound, some slash Gaara had sustained during the battle, isn't that at all. The Kazekage's eyes show him now what they couldn't see last night, plain to see. Kanji, a character of the diplomatic tongue—a message not just for the people of Kaze, but for all the world, to be seen and remembered. 'Ai.' 'Love.' There it is, carved, stark and scarlet, into Gaara's smooth, pale skin.

Beside him, seeing all of this just as clearly as he does, Kankuro makes a small, perturbed sound in his throat. The Kazekage doesn't hear it. Instead, he reaches forward, feels the ridges on Gaara's forehead, sure to scar, beneath his fingers, and wonders how he never noticed this before.

He doesn't think about what this means.

-0-0-0-

The day wears on.

The councilors are, of course, utterly livid over this catastrophe, and when they come in to the council chamber they strongly stink of fear. While they're furious over the damage and what they consider the "mishandling" of the situation, they've also witnessed the full scope of Gaara and the Shukaku's destructive power when someone who is capable of stopping the pair is present to do so. None of them like to think of something like this happening again, or what it will mean for Suna if this is allowed to go on. All in all, the meeting was about as productive as the Kazekage expected it to be (which is to say, not at all); the councilors do naught but express their fears the whole time. But at least he's seen to be doing something, which gives him more time to think about exactly what he's going to do about this.

After the meeting, the Kazekage calls the hospital to send a medic to see about his side. A kunoichi who looks too young to be practicing field medicine, let alone practicing in a hospital, responds to his summons. She applies healing chakra, reapplies antiseptic, re-bandages the wound, gives him the "change the bandages at least once a day, more if they get soaked or dirty" speech he's been hearing ever since he made genin twenty-five years ago, and recommends fluids.

The repairmen send someone to report back to him. The buildings can not be salvaged. None of them can be. They'll all have to be demolished, and built back up from the ground. Half of the cracked cisterns are looking the same way. Fortunately, the electrical lines aren't beyond saving, and none of the pipes are damaged. But the Kazekage still shudders when he looks at the projected cost of all the needed rebuilding and repair work. There's no cutting corners on things like this, but if only there had been less damage…

More reports come in. The shelters are indeed overflowing; now-homeless citizens flock to the shelters, to the hostels, to the tenement houses, when they can't find refuge with family or friends. The people are frightened, shying away from the shadows. The people are outraged, muttering among themselves. The people are wondering what is to come, whispering into the dark.

_It… It was inevitable, I suppose. But if the situation altogether just could have been averted…_

Then, Gaara wakes up.

The Kazekage bites back a sigh as he stares down at his young son. The boy had apparently woken up in a kitchen chair (obviously, he didn't just let Gaara continue to lie on that kitchen table after Chiyo was done with her work; that would have just been entirely too unsanitary) and had wandered up the stairwell and onto the second floor. Gaara's never been here before; inevitably, he got lost, and no one could have been more surprised than the Kazekage to come down the hall and see him standing there, drinking in his surroundings intently.

"You'll live here from now on," he says to Gaara. "That room there—" he points and nods to a room off to Gaara's left "—is where you will stay. Here is the key to that room." He hands Gaara his key, which the boy takes without comment and tucks away into his pant pocket. "Do you understand?"

Gaara nods wordlessly. There's not the nervous timidity that his father's come to expect to be found in him. His shoulders don't shake or slump; they are straight and level. The boy meets his father's gaze evenly, instead of ducking his head as he would have done just yesterday. His eyes are… They're blank. Pale green irides that betray utterly no emotion. They look like marbles. They don't look like they did yesterday.

_Maybe he'll still be alright_, the Kazekage thinks to himself, though not with much optimism, as Gaara unlocks his door and slips inside. _After all, he's much calmer than the other two hosts were after their outbursts. He's not rampaging. Maybe he'll be alright._

-0-0-0-

The morning after all of this finds all four of them, father and his three children, sitting down at the same kitchen table for breakfast the first time in their lives.

Now that all the seats are filled, with Gaara taking what once had been the empty chair, the table seems just a touch crowded. At the same time, though, no one attempts to engage him in conversation, and his presence there is not verbally acknowledged or, by the other two children, really acknowledged at all. Those three children eat their bread, eat cold lumps of white, briny cheese unearthed from the back of the refrigerator, and drink their frothy milk in silence.

Over his own cup of coffee (strong; he barely got any sleep at all last night), the Kazekage considers his youngest child. The boy eats slowly, and with far less enthusiasm than either of his older siblings, who apart from their unnatural silence, seem more or less back to normal this morning. He keeps his head down, and his eyes trained on his plate. There's no way he could suspect that his future is being contemplated by his only surviving parent, at this very moment.

There's no doubt that most would consider it unwise (at best) for the Kazekage to bring Gaara into his house, to house him alongside his siblings, after everything that's happened. The Kazekage doesn't think Temari and Kankuro are in any less danger of Gaara now than they were when he was born; quite the opposite. But now that Yashamaru has died (and even if he had survived, the bridges have been burned), there is nowhere else for Gaara to go. The Kazekage trusts no one else with him, not even Baki, who's been caring for the boy's older siblings for years now, and he doubts highly that anyone would be willing to take Gaara on as their charge anyways.

_There's nowhere else for him to go, nowhere else I can send him. Maybe being around his siblings, around children who don't automatically ostracize him, will help stabilize him, keep him from lashing out at strangers and the children who refuse to play with him. Maybe._

The fact that he's having Gaara live with his siblings _now_, now that the child's proved just how dangerous he is at his lowest point, probably isn't what would make most people raise their eyebrows if they could know the thoughts going through the Kazekage's mind, though. There's something else far more likely to provoke that reaction, and stronger reactions still, that occupies his thoughts at the moment.

Yesterday during the council meeting, it was decided that since Yashamaru's "assassination attempt" had been a failure (with much whispering from the council members—none of whom were privy to the medic's status as an ANBU member—that the Kazekage should not have expected a chunin, let alone one who had been out of the field for seven years, to be able to pull off a successful assassination against the jinchuuriki host), it should fall to others to end Gaara's life. The Kazekage hadn't expected them to believe otherwise, and he agreed to it, both to silence any possible objections over him being too soft because the host's his flesh and blood, and because it is, after all, standard procedure to have eliminated any person or creature who poses a significant threat to Sunagakure.

That's not to say that he honestly expects any of the future assassination attempts to succeed. After what happened last night, how can he?

_I won't be able to justify sending anyone of lower rank than jonin after him, _the Kazekage thinks to himself resignedly, swishing his cup in the futile attempt to keep the dregs from thickening up the coffee too much. _Well—_his thoughts take on a grimly sardonic note_—I suppose this would provide a good opportunity to weed out the leeches and malcontents. Anyone who's not pulling their weight or seems disloyal, send them after Gaara. I'll just have to look over their records and make sure they don't have a history of being partial to poisons. _And he'll have to make sure the jonin he sends isn't the type to use poisons first; being able to mix a lethal poison is a requirement for jonin in Sunagakure, but that doesn't mean they all do it on a regular basis.

No, after last night, the Kazekage doesn't think that there is anyone beside him in this village who could kill Gaara by any means apart from poison. That's not meant as arrogance, and frankly, it's not arrogance at all—it's nothing but plain, unembellished truth. Perhaps that automatic defense of Gaara's will fail eventually, but it's just as likely that it won't. No one can lay hands on Gaara unless he wants them to. No one can hurt him at all. The gold dust is the only thing that can move quicker than that sand, is the only thing that can subdue that sand. Right now, he is the only one who can kill his son. Even if no one else understands that, this knowledge weighs heavy on his mind.

_And here I am, playing both sides against the middle. _He knows that Gaara is a threat. He knows that his responsibility as Kazekage requires him to see that any threat to his village is stomped out, even if that threat is his young son whom he barely knows. He's willing to give the appearance of wanting to have Gaara killed. He's willing to keep the boy distant from him emotionally, to avoid growing too attached if the child _is _killed, or if the day comes when the Shukaku has to be extracted from him. And he's willing to concede that Gaara failed the test that would have given his father an excuse to spare his life.

There's all that, staring him dead in the eyes. But he just can't commit to the idea that Gaara must be killed. He just can't walk up to the child and strangle him with a tendril of gold, or snap his neck or suffocate him or poison him or anything else. It's not practical, the Kazekage decides bitterly. It's not good judgment. It's not the _responsible_ thing to do, letting Gaara live. He's letting his feelings as a father overrule his duty as the leader of this nation. That's not something he should ever do.

That's the truth of the matter, nonetheless.

Temari reaches for the last lump of cheese on the cheese plate in the center of the table at the same time that Kankuro does. Frowning, she smacks her brother's offending hand with the closed fan that was sitting on her lap, making it painfully obvious what she thinks about having to share the cheese with anyone.

Except it's not Kankuro whose hand she's struck.

It's Gaara's.

For the second time in as many days, time seems to stand still. Temari freezes, her green eyes huge and horror-stricken. She still clutches the fan in her small hand, gaping, open-mouthed, at her youngest sibling who sits across the table from her. Kankuro's eyes flit towards the door, wondering in that moment if Gaara could kill him in the time it would take him to get out of the kitchen. The Kazekage stiffens, readying himself the storm that may well come.

Gaara stares at his sister for a long moment, his face registering naked shock. No one has ever struck him before, neither with a hand or with something like a silk-and-sandalwood fan. The fan's destructive power in the hands of a nine-year-old girl is so limited that the sand didn't even bother to rush to his defense. The silence yawns up between brother and sister, each moment in which nothing is said increasing the likelihood of violence.

But Gaara says nothing, does nothing. He stares at Temari for a few seconds, and then, he quietly retracts his hand, and starts to nibble on the warm, soft sourdough bread provided him as anyone would expect of a shy, quiet seven-year-old.

The Kazekage breathes a silent sigh of relief.

_Maybe he really is alright._

-0-0-0-

A few minutes later, he'll eat those words.

Having finished his coffee, leaving his children to finish their breakfast and move on to whatever it is they're doing today, the Kazekage starts up the stairwell. He's halfway to the second floor when a monstrous wave of chakra spikes from down below, slamming against him like the sand of the Shukaku had two nights prior.

Rushing back down to the kitchen, he finds sand whirling all about.

Kankuro and Temari appear to have tried to escape, but find their escape route cut off by sand, and have backed into a corner.

Gaara looks nothing if not deranged. His aura drips with blood lust.

This incident is thankfully cleared up quickly and with minimal injury. A few ground rules are set after that. To Temari and Kankuro: when you are in your rooms, keep the doors locked; do _not _venture out of your rooms after dark unless you absolutely have to; avoid Gaara when he's angry. They are all too happy to comply, skittering away from their brother like cockroaches confronted with the light. To Gaara: never come to the fifth floor during office hours; never go in your siblings' rooms, for _any _reason. The Kazekage has no way of knowing if Gaara listened. He has no way of knowing if he even heard him.

And he doesn't think this is going to help. Gaara clearly isn't alright.


	11. Grains of Sand

_Grains of Sand_

* * *

Repair work on the now-demolished buildings is moving on schedule; there's been some dispute about how much the construction workers are to be paid, but it's nothing that can't be worked out, in time. Most of the citizens who found themselves homeless after the Shukaku's rampage have found temporary housing, whether it be in other apartment complexes, shelters, or with friends or family. The rest, however?

Those who have not found housing in Sunagakure, are leaving, one by one.

The Kazekage is aware of this, just as he is aware that since all those leaving are civilians, he can't do much to stop them. He looks over the summary of petitions for those seeking to leave, and knows he hasn't got any legitimate reason to keep them here. He signs his name in black ink, presses a minute amount of his chakra into the ink to verify his identity, and hands the summary back over to the messenger, biting back a sigh all the while.

When they leave, they'll take their business, their work, their industry with them. If there really is no longer any place for them here, no place where they can live and thrive, then the Kazekage supposes he can't blame them for seeking their fortune elsewhere. If they don't feel safe here, if they feel like their lives and the lives of their children are at risk, then he supposes he really shouldn't blame them for leaving. But their departure will hurt this city. Oh yes, it will hurt all the more if they leave the nation altogether, but Suna would still be left to ail even if the villagers who are planning on leaving now were just planning on moving to one of the port cities or one of the villages up in the mountains to the northwest. The economy, and thus Suna's ability to assert itself as a major power on the continent, suffers whenever there is a mass migration out of the city.

_I find myself the leader of a nation of wary of shadows and the future. And why, exactly, are they _not _supposed to be wary, especially considering…_

Sitting at his desk, staring out the window upon a Sunagakure in full afternoon blush, the Kazekage's face darkens as he recalls another report that made its way to his desk earlier today.

Last night, he called the first of potentially many jonin into his office with an "unusual" mission for him. Anand, the young jonin in question, has a long history of insubordinate behavior and not working well in groups. Though the man is apparently talented enough to have become jonin, he shows no sign of ever being willing to learn the importance of cooperation and respect for authority, and as a result, few will work with him. On top of all that, he specializes in taijutsu and hasn't mixed a poison in more than two years. He's perfect for the mission.

Or, rather, he was.

The Kazekage hadn't expected any better. That's what he tells himself, as he looks at the photographs accompanying the report, stark black-and-white things—Anand on the attack, Anand falling back to defense, Anand quite, _quite _dead. He remains caught between relief that Gaara survived the attack and frustration that, having made a weapon out of a child and having watched that venture fail miserably, if ever comes the time when Gaara will pose so great an immediate threat to Sunagakure, it's entirely possible that no one will be able to put an end to the threat he represents.

Anand is dead, Gaara still lives, and in a few days, a week at the most, the Kazekage will have to organize another likely (_hopefully, no matter how much he has to mask that opinion_) futile assassination attempt against his youngest child. He puts the pictures of the dead jonin down, pushes the written report (courtesy of the ANBU) aside, and takes the other photographs taken by the ANBU in his hands.

In the moments before the assassination attempt began, when Anand was still creeping up behind him, Gaara sported the dull-eyed, blank expression that he so often wears these days, the look that has become normal for him. He doesn't look like one of the living when he wears that face, too pale for a Suna villager, eyes too lusterless to belong to a living boy when he looks at the world around him. There's no liveliness to his limbs when he walks. The Kazekage stares at this first picture for a few moments, but the more he looks at Gaara, at the boy's dead-eyed face, at his long, thin shadow, at the carved 'Ai' scar on his forehead, the more he wishes that he'd never re-opened the jinchuuriki project in the first place, and the more he can't stand to look at him like this. He turns the photo down on its face and moves to the others. That one is almost more difficult to look at than what comes afterwards.

Gaara's expression in the following photographs is progressively bestial. There is a photo of Anand trying to attack him with kunai. Both the jonin and the kunai appear as blurs in the photo, but Gaara is standing still. While the sand is swirling all around him, the boy, facing the ANBU agent's camera as he is, can be clearly seen and observed. The photo was taken from the side of a wall some thirty feet up from the ground, but even from that height there's no mistaking the way his mouth has twisted in a snarl.

The second photograph, taken as Gaara was first going on the counter-attack, engulfing his would-be assassin in sand, was taken from closer to ten feet off the ground, and gives a much better look at his face. That snarl is still firmly fixed in place, showing all of Gaara's teeth and the gaps from where some of his milk teeth have fallen out and have yet to be replaced by permanent teeth. It drips with cruelty and bloodlust; his pale eyes are no longer flat and dull but gleam with a heart-stopping malice. He wants to kill.

The third and final photograph was taken by an ANBU agent on an opposite wall. Gaara's back was facing this camera, but the scene the photo catches instead is all that needs to be said of the conclusion of this story. The image captured is that of Anand's last desperate glimpse at the sun before he is swallowed entirely by sand. Only one of his dark eyes is visible. It is wide open and dilated in terror.

Despite already knowing the answer, it still bothers him to see expressions like the one he wore today on Gaara's face. How does a seven-year-old boy who has never been on the front lines of battle come to so viscerally enjoy killing, as Gaara has? How do they come to need it so badly that the venture out past their homes at night, looking for victims to kill, as Gaara has begun to do?

The answer to these questions is always the same. _Because I made him that way, _the Kazekage admits heavily, rubbing his forehead and trying, always failing, to shake the weariness of that knowledge from his heart. _Because I made him to be a weapon, the guardian of this village, but the demon had its way, and the child just couldn't take it. Because Gaara snapped, and I can't find it in me to put an end to the suffering he feels or the terror he causes._

_Why, _he wonders gloomily, _why did I think this was a good idea? Why did I ever think this was a good idea? Why did I think that the risk to Karura, the risk to Gaara, the risk to the lives of everyone else in this village, would be worth the vague promise of augmenting the strength of Sunagakure? The past two jinchuuriki ended up just like this; why did I think that now would be any different?_

_What on Earth was I thinking that day, when I decided to go forward with this?_

Of course, those questions he keeps asking himself don't erase the reality that everything that's happened has been the result of his choice, made over the warnings and objections of others. It doesn't change the fact that spending his life wandering through the past won't leave him any time to attend to the present, no matter how oddly appealing it is to take refuge in the land of things that can no longer be changed and the land of the way things used to be.

There's something else about these pictures that, though it doesn't leave him morose and brooding, hardly leaves him with the impulse to smile.

Nowhere in the report sent to his desk does it mention that Temari and Kankuro were present during Anand's attack today. Oh, the report is thorough in all other respects, detailing Anand's tactics and strategy, Gaara's response, and the bloody results that ensued, but that's all it says. However, the Kazekage has only to look at the pictures to see two familiar forms present there.

He can't tell the sort of looks that were on their faces; both of his older children hover at the edges and corners of the photographs, at the periphery of the ANBU agent's attention. However, the Kazekage can guess that they were terrified, and can guess that the only reason they didn't flee when Anand attacked Gaara was that they were too terrified to move. It's strange how terror seems to root so many, especially children, to the ground on which they stand.

No matter what the Kazekage told Anand to do concerning Gaara, the young jonin, however insubordinate he was, should never have for one second entertained the suspicion that his leader wanted his two older children to be put in harm's way by an assassination attempt on Gaara. _I gave him a week in which to carry out the assassination. Surely he could have found a time to attack Gaara when Kankuro or Temari weren't nearby. I fail to see why it would have been such a difficult thing to arrange._

In future, when debriefing potential assassins, he will tell them to be certain, unambiguously certain, that Gaara's siblings are nowhere in the vicinity before they attempt to dispatch him. If they do not make sure, or if by some chance Temari or Kankuro become collateral damage in the assassination attempt, any assassin, whether they have succeeded or failed, had best hope that they die in their attempt to carry out the Kazekage's orders. Otherwise, they may well have more to fear from their leader than from the host of Sunagakure, as said leader has little reason to love and no more tolerance for collateral damage.

_Too many loose ends. I keep leaving too many loose ends, keeping leaving too many things to chance._

Then, the door to his office creaks open. The Kazekage looks over to the door, wondering who would be coming in here without knocking first, only to see Temari standing with her back to him, shutting the door far more quietly than she usually does. A folding tessen the size of a hand fan hangs at her hip; she's just gotten back from training, then.

He sits there, frowning at her silently, as Temari crosses the floor, equally silent and pale as bleached vellum parchment around pink lips and green eyes. Though she does indeed look pale and slightly insubstantial, her pace is steady, her clothes aren't torn, and she doesn't smell of blood. He doesn't ask, but he supposes, from this, that she and Kankuro are both alright.

(It half-occurs to the Kazekage, in this moment, that he has probably never thought of his two older children as separate entities except when he absolutely has to. It's always "Kankuro and Temari" or "Temari and Kankuro", but never the two independent of each other, if they're together in a room or on a street. If they're together, they seem to coalesce into a single unit.

Perhaps that's not the way it needs to be. Perhaps the two of them need to be treated as separate individuals if there is ever to be any hope of their growing into such.

He pushes the thought aside, as the present presses down on him again.)

"Yes, Temari?" he asks her, when she comes up to his desk and stands there silently for a few seconds, straight-backed and trying to look more adult (or so he assumes), but ruining the image by running her fingernail over the seam on the inside of her sleeve hem. She doesn't meet his gaze; the Kazekage is met with the top of his daughter's golden head instead.

"Erm…" Her normally clear, well-heard voice is barely audible now "…I was wondering…"

"Well? Speak up."

At that Temari's head snaps up. She's not just pale around the eyes. Those same eyes are bloodshot; her irides seem more vividly green than ever. The girl draws a deep, slightly shuddering breath, but this time, she doesn't falter. "I was just wondering," she says quietly, "why Gaara calls the Shukaku 'Mother'?"

_What?_

Provided with this new bit of information, the cogs of the Kazekage's mind seem to cease whirring entirely, unable to process the knowledge Temari's imparted on him. He only remembers she's still there when he feels her fingers on his wrist, the dull edges of her fingernails pressing slightly on his flesh. "Father?" Anxiety pulls at her voice.

He recovers thought long enough to stare over the top of his daughter's head and send her out of the room with a peremptory "I couldn't tell you. Now away with you." Temari skitters away, not her proud, clear-eyed self, but like a shadow shying away from the sun. The door falls shut behind her. Her father's left to his thoughts.

_Mother…_

_He calls the demon Mother…_

_Just what did Yashamaru _tell him_ that night?_

There's no telling at the strangeness lying, dark and deep, in Gaara's heart and mind, strangeness beyond that of any normal child. The child who had adored the mother of his flesh and blood now looks to a sexless demon, the creature that haunts his every waking hour and keeps him from rest, and calls it Mother instead. How can have made this change? How can his view of the world so profoundly shifted that he feels more akin to a demon than to human beings?

_I suppose it would be easier to guess at the answer if I knew him well, or if I knew him at all. _His jaw twists bitterly. _But there's the crux of the matter. I don't know my son any better than I know the rye farmers in Kaminari or the fishermen in Mizu. I made him into a weapon. I bound his fate to that of a demon and gave him to another man for safekeeping, for fear that he would hurt his siblings, for fear that if the day came that he needed to be killed, I wouldn't be able to do it._

_And look where that's gotten me. His siblings are still in danger from him. Yashamaru is dead and no one else will take him. And even though I kept him far away from me, I can't kill him. I'm not sure if anything's capable of killing him anymore, and I'm not sure if I'm even capable of trying. The most I can do is send ineffectual assassins after his head, hoping they won't succeed._

He can't begin to imagine how broken Gaara would have to be to seriously believe that the demon whispering in his mind is his mother. _Or how utterly mad he'd have to be to believe it. When did he start to believe this in his heart, after years of the Shukaku's whispering, or that night on the roof? _

_What did Yashamaru tell him then?_

_What does the demon tell him now?_

_What could I have done? _(_Plenty of things, as it happens_, he acknowledges, in the part of his mind where he can be honest with himself, _but I did none of them_.)

_Karura wouldn't have…_

That thought fizzles out, like the carbonation from soda after it's been sitting out too long. There's a lot of things Karura wouldn't have done, a lot of things she wouldn't have wanted to happen, and a lot of things she wouldn't have _let _happen. But it's worthless to wonder about what a woman more than seven years dead would be doing if she was alive. It's worthless to be looking to memories and shades for advice. If he could hear her voice today, all Karura would say is _"Well I told you not to. Why didn't you listen to me?" _That will give him absolutely no help.

By all rights, Gaara ought to name her as Mother, and not the demon of the wastes. But how, his father concedes heavily, is he supposed to know who his mother is when all he's ever known of her is his uncle's stories and a portrait sitting on the living room table? How?

_He's not. He's absolutely not._

_I just wish this could be over with._

-0-0-0-

Down in the kitchen that night, intending to search for something to eat—the workload was such that he was forced to skip supper—the Kazekage comes upon his two sons in the midst of an altercation.

He doesn't know what this was about. He doesn't know who started it. He supposes that he should be grateful that Gaara hadn't yet been sufficiently angered as to summon his sand and was sticking to making death threats under his breath and steadily backing Kankuro in a corner. If he'd brought the sand out while the Kazekage was still in his office the latter doesn't think he would have gotten all the way down to the first floor in time to keep Gaara from using lethal force against his brother.

Feeling his ire rise far more than it normally would under such circumstances, the Kazekage sends Gaara out of the room curtly and roughly demands out of his middle child "What happened now? What did you say?"

Though the fight is over, Kankuro still looks… irate. Apparently the Kazekage isn't the only one out of sorts tonight; it's rare for Kankuro to look so unthinkingly furious. He's the type to hold grudges and keep his head when angry, not launch in to bad situations without a care for his own skin. His cheeks are flushed dark as he answers. "He calls that demon Mother! I told him not to, but he wouldn't listen! He just kept on calling it Mother!"

His father doesn't answer.

"Did you hear me?!" Kankuro insists, all restraint clearly quite forgotten. "He calls the Shukaku Mother! Why is he doing that?!"

"Get whatever you were here for and go," is all the Kazekage says to his elder son, and he cares not a whit for the thwarted, indignant look on the boy's face.

As soon as he is left alone in the kitchen, the Kazekage leans against the table and groans.

* * *

1: A tessen is an iron Japanese war fan; the one in particular that Temari wields is a folding fan similar to the one she has in the present day, but smaller. I don't know if fans smaller than the one Temari wields in _Naruto_ proper exist in the _Naruto_ canon-verse, but I'm just going to go ahead and say they exist here, and that the use of the tessen, both giant and "traditional" (read: small) is a dying art in all lands other than Kaze no Kuni, which is why you don't see them in any other lands. The tessen can be used, in this universe, for channeling wind chakra, but it can also be used as a club, to deflect darts, arrows (and I suppose kunai and shuriken as well), to parry sword or spear strikes, and, according to the Wikipedia article (so take it as you will), even as a throwing weapon. Temari's training with the smaller one both for its own merit and in preparation for the day when she plans to use a larger tessen.

Happy New Year's, everyone.


	12. About Face

Content Note: Mentions of drug use.

* * *

_About Face_

* * *

Any shinobi worth their salt knows that, when orchestrating multiple assassination attempts on the same person, the next attempt can not take place too soon after the first one failed. Anyone who has recently had an attempt made on their lives, especially if that person is a shinobi or in possession of some sort of special ability, will be extra-wary and vigilant, just waiting for another assassin to attack them. What needs to be done is to let the target go long enough without any further attempt made on their life that they fall into a false sense of security.

The Kazekage isn't entirely certain that Gaara is even capable of feeling secure anymore. But as it stands, he waits a month before sending a second assassin after him.

In that month, there are eight casualties and three fatalities inflicted by Sunagakure's young jinchuuriki host. In that month, an apothecary and a baker from the far east end of the village, the only one in his neighborhood, leave Sunagakure for good; the apothecary goes to the port city of Mynassaf and the baker leaves the country altogether. They see better business and a smaller likelihood of death elsewhere. Those who have stayed behind grow more and more frightened, less likely to venture outside after dark. Some of the shops run by shopkeepers who have chosen to stay start closing up at earlier hours. Suna goes dark before midnight now, not afterwards.

The councilors want something done. The daimyo wants something done. And it's not just them, either. Lately, the local community leaders have been making their voices heard, whether through letters, petitions, or showing up to speak to the Kazekage in person.

"_Sir, please." This latest one is an elderly Hindu temple priest, peering out at the Kazekage through thick spectacles. "I can understand why you hesitate, but even I can no longer deny that you must stop the child before his bloodlust devours us all."_

And still, the Kazekage knows he has to wait. It's unlikely that Gaara will ever forget any of the attempts made on his life, but he needs to wait until the boy's no longer casting his eyes behind his shoulders every other moment. In the meantime, he reads the reports of the deaths, negotiates with his councilors, wearily answers letters to the daimyo, and prays each night that the next day won't bring any deaths at the incorporeal hands of Gaara's sand. _I may as well, _he decides, casting his eyes towards the ceiling, _go back to worshipping the god of my youth, with all the praying I've been doing._

So it is with a mixture of relief (gladness to be done waiting, for while waiting is something the Kazekage is perfectly capable of, it's never been something he does gladly) and trepidation (the worry that this assassination attempt might be successful), that, thirty-four days after Anand's attempt on Gaara's life failed, the Kazekage calls on another to assassinate his son.

Mihoko is a thirty-six-year-old jonin who fell into opium addiction after the close of the last war, and was put on prolonged medical leave until she was able to recover. While she has since been able to go back to work, her performance is not what it once was. She no longer works in the field, instead making her living as a patrolman, wandering the city streets at night. Her supervisor notes that she is easily distracted, and that her reports are often sloppy and incomplete.

She accepts the mission with an utter lack of curiosity that would have disturbed any other man. The Kazekage is not disturbed, only relieved that he doesn't have to answer impertinent questions or, worse yet, the look of curiosity many cast upon the man seemingly happily willing to have the child of his flesh killed. _"Yes, sir," _she murmurs without looking at him, and leaves.

Mihoko ambushes Gaara in the middle of a crowded street, and falls to the sand with pitiful speed. After the terror that follows is done, four are admitted to the hospital; two as result of being trampled by the mob rushing away form the scene, one as a result of a stray kunai, and one as a result of being lashed out at by Gaara's indiscriminate sand. Another is killed by that same sand, smashed up against a wall.

Gaara walks away, whispering to his "Mother", as though nothing ever happened and the sand swirling behind him isn't dripping blood. Mihoko is taken to the nearest morgue in three separate bags. The incident is an utter fiasco.

-0-0-0-

Two nights later, the Kazekage happens upon Gaara in a hallway in the Governmental Complex.

Lately, some of the sand that swirls around him at all times has coalesced into a gourd that sits across his back, secured by a length of white cloth. The boy's shadow is misshapen, and his back slightly bent. His footsteps are far heavier than they used to be as the result of this increased weight, and thanks to that, the Kazekage hears him long before he sees him.

There is a dark red stain on one of Gaara's trouser legs and the Kazekage bites back a sigh when he sees it. He doesn't question the boy about it; you don't have to be a genius to know where the blood came from, and the Kazekage's sure he'll have a report on his desk soon enough, about who it is Gaara killed or maimed this time.

Gaara looks up at him, a silent, baleful stare, his pale green eyes full of hate. His lips are clenched tight together, receding into his mouth; his brow is furrowed, the 'Ai' tattoo wrinkled. The Kazekage's been expecting this look for a while, been expecting it for a long time now. But at that expression of concentrated animosity, murderous intent, the Kazekage can't help but take a step back, despite himself, despite the fact that he hasn't flinched away from a silent threat since he was thirteen years old and he'd had no intention of doing so again now at the sight of his son.

_I suppose he could decide to attack me at any time. Why should I be surprised? By this time he must know where these assassins are coming from; Gaara must have reasoned with himself, at least once, that if he was to kill me, perhaps the assassination attempts would stop. It's not true, and he doesn't know—can't know—that far worse would happen if I died, but how is he to know that?_

_And why, _the Kazekage reasons with himself wearily, _shouldn't he want to kill me?_

But then, after what seems an eternity with the silence growing ever thicker and more difficult to breathe in, Gaara's eyes glaze over, and he seems to stare straight through his father, no longer seeing him. He looks down at the ground, shaking his head. "No, Mother," he whispers in a rasping voice. "Not yet. Soon." The boy trudges away, shoulders hunched and back bent, his lumpen shadow quavering behind him in the flicker of the lighting overhead.

Watching him leave, the Kazekage lets go of the breath he'd been holding deep in his chest. Something painful rises in his throat, something he either can't put a name to or doesn't care to name. All of a sudden, he feels very tired, every muscle sore and aching with exhaustion.

If what he has planned for the boy is to go forward, it would not do for the Kazekage to antagonize Gaara any more than he has to. But still, he'd like very much to call Gaara back and tell him not to call the Shukaku "Mother." To call the demon by the only name it deserves.

-0-0-0-

This time, the waiting game goes on just long enough to keep the councilors from raising too much of a fuss. It's unlikely that Gaara will let his guard down again, so the main struggle is stalling for time until the councilors start voicing their concerns again, but not waiting so long that the Kazekage has people knocking down his door again.

Twenty-eight days and seven fatalities later, the Kazekage calls on another to kill his young son.

Hirokazu goes up against Gaara this time. He's an elderly jonin, planning to retire; the Kazekage bills this as one last mission for Hirokazu, before his retirement. Hirokazu has lived through three wars; his sense of honor and duty are unimpeachable. If he has any objections to being sent on this mission, he does not voice them.

_He was a loyal soldier; it almost seems a shame…_

Come the next morning, the Kazekage receives a report from the ANBU while responding to a letter from the Daimyo.

…_we are working towards a resolution… _Sitting at his desk, the Kazekage stares down at the parchment pressed beneath his hand in frustration. The daimyo is weak and has been growing demonstrably weaker with each passing month. He resides at his estates in the southern region of the country, on the coast, year round; the Kazekage doubts that Kaze's present daimyo has ever even set foot in Sunagakure. The daimyo has no contact with his people and yet he continues raise a fuss over the country's economic situation and Gaara's status (Or rather, the Kazekage's ostensible dithering over what to do with the boy; evidently, sending assassins after Gaara's hide isn't clear enough a message).

Then, there's a knock at the door. The Kazekage looks up from his letter-writing, both relieved to have a distraction from this task, and irked that the writing of the daimyo's letter is going to take longer than it has to. "Come in," he calls shortly.

A masked and hooded ANBU operative, bearing the porcelain mask of a hawk, slips through the door with nary a sound. For a moment, the Kazekage is given pause, a familiar name on his lips, before he remembers that the one who bore it is dead. Yashamaru had worn a hawk mask when on duty. _But Yashamaru's dead. Let him rest. Let them all rest._

The operative produces a manila file from the folds of his, or her (it's difficult to determine gender with this one from height and build alone; but then, it had been difficult to determine gender with Yashamaru as well), brown cloak. "You wanted the report, sir?" Though through the porcelain mask, the operative's voice is muffled and echoes slightly, but it is undeniably female. And there is only one report that she could possibly be talking about.

"Yes, thank you."

She puts the file on his desk, bows, and leaves.

It would be a lie for the Kazekage to say that he doesn't have some idea of what result "the report" entails, but he flips open the file and reads it anyway. Hirokazu has died, bit that doesn't surprise the Kazekage; he was, after all, an old man, long past his prime. He opened with a barrage of kunai, an outdated technique for which a more efficient update has long since been developed. Like everyone who has attempted to assassinate Gaara before, Hirokazu attacked him from behind. The sand shot out of the gourd on Gaara's back before Gaara had so much as an inkling of danger. It caught the kunai and flung them aside. Then, Gaara, now aware of the danger, turned round and struck. The old man did not seem to die peacefully.

For the Kazekage, this takes him one step closer to his goal.

-0-0-0-

The fourth, Yusuf, does not go eagerly. By now, word has gotten out among the jonin (and Tokubetsu jonin, and chunin, and likely the genin as well) about what happens to jonin sent to assassinate Gaara. Yusuf, though he is branded a malcontent, is no fool.

"_Sir, I must—"_

"_Would you defy a direct order?"_

"_But sir—"_

"_Would you?"_

_A pause. Yusuf licks his dry lips. "No, sir."_

"_Then I see no reason for your protests."_

The report comes in while the Kazekage is handing out mission scrolls on the first floor of the Governmental Complex. Handing out mission scrolls was always something he enjoyed, one of the few things about his position he truly enjoys these days, but given how often the council finds itself in session, it's not something the Kazekage can do very often; usually, this task is delegated to an aide—or several.

A chunin and her protégé are in the middle of receiving a C-rank mission when an ANBU operative, who from his height and build can hardly be taken for anything but a man, skirts the edge of the room, places a manila file at the Kazekage's side, and mutters "The report, sir," before flickering away

The Kazekage waits until the two shinobi are out of the room until opening the file, and tries not to notice the way they both stiffen when their eyes fall on that seemingly inconspicuous file folder.

Yusuf is dead.

He attacked Gaara from behind with an attack puppet, and the sand destroyed the puppet in a hailstorm of senbon, gears and splinters in the moment before Gaara noticed the danger at his back.

_And so we move on._

-0-0-0-

The first four have come and gone. There are still yet more to come.

Number five, Shiri, dies in sand.

Number six, Noritaka, dies in sand.

Number seven, Ayano, dies in sand.

When number eight, Taichi, goes the same way as the as the previous seven would-be assassins, the Kazekage has waited long enough.

For a few moments, he pauses at his desk, fingering the report with narrowed eyes and slackened face.

In this attack, the sand shielded Gaara automatically, before he was aware of the danger rising up behind him. It was the same with all the previous attacks, back to when Yashamaru died at his nephew's hands, one night that seems an eternity past.

The sun is starting to sink in the sky, sinking over the rooftops and the city walls. Hexagonal shadows scatter across the floor from the terracotta lattice set over the window. For a moment, the Kazekage can hear a voice, dredged up from memory, half-whispering "_My sister… I don't think that's wise, sir."_

He and Yashamaru had never been friends. His brother-in-law, the Kazekage knows, had hated him over what happened to Karura. But Yashamaru saw clearly what the future held, perhaps more clearly than anyone else in this village. Far more clearly than the Kazekage, who had possessed only an inkling of Yashamaru's foresight, and had never seen that future plainly.

"The sand always protects him, doesn't it?" he murmurs, eyes growing glazed and abstracted. "Almost like…" The Kazekage remembers himself before he can finish that sentence, but only slightly, given what he says next. "Well, Yashamaru," he calls out to an empty room, "you never did approve of anything I did as regards Gaara. But perhaps you'll approve of this."

Not surprisingly, no one answers.

-0-0-0-

The councilors raise objections and are summarily ignored. Instead of being heeded, they are instead treated to the sight of their leader completely reversing his policy on what is to be done with the jinchuuriki host of Sunagakure, without anything resembling an explanation. And the daimyo, when he learns of this, will no doubt raise objections of his own. The Kazekage will deal with that when it comes.

He steps out into the world, wind beating into his face, dust going up into his eyes, the late afternoon light all but dousing the streets in shadow.

This was a mistake. Instead of huddling in secret places to cry, Gaara now kills to alleviate his pain, to sate the demon's voice in his head and slake his own bloodlust. This was nothing but a mistake from the start. But if the slate can't be wiped clean…

The Kazekage draws a deep breath. If the slate can't be wiped clean, then he should at least try to make the best of a bad situation.

Now to find Gaara.

* * *

1: Opium and its derivatives is the main substance used as a reliever of severe pain in Kaze no Kuni. There were high numbers of opium addicts in the nation after the close of each of the world wars.


	13. More Than The Sum

_More Than The Sum_

* * *

The Kazekage couldn't tell you where his youngest son goes when he wants to be alone. The most he could tell you is that wherever that place is, it's not anywhere inside the Governmental Complex; the ever-burning flame of Gaara's chakra was nowhere to be found inside.

Finding Gaara may be easier said than done. The Kazekage's no sensor, and even a talented sensor nin would have difficulties picking one chakra signature out of a crowd of more than one hundred thousand, even if he knew what he was looking for. As it is, the Kazekage does know what he's looking for; his son's chakra signature is highly distinct and strong enough, even at his young age and with his lack of training, that if the Kazekage gets close enough, he'll know Gaara is nearby, even without consciously seeking his chakra out. He supposes that he'll just have to search blindly until he picks up on the traces of the boy's chakra.

_I could use a walk anyways._

It's only about four-thirty in the afternoon and the streets are still crowded (though not as crowded as they used to be at this time, the Kazekage can't help but note), so he is able to move about without being spotted or noticed. Just another citizen wandering through the crowds aimlessly. These citizens do not seem at all wary or uneasy. Shopkeepers ply their wares, the usual mélange of the smells of tea, spices, meat, sweat and livestock thick in the air. Shoppers wander about at their ease, not in any hurry, except to escape the bitter sun. Gaara has clearly not been through here.

The past few months of terror and failed assassination attempts, all of that has been leading up to this, with the Kazekage stalling for time until he could plausibly give up on assassination attempts, declaring them to be futile. The daimyo and the councilors were—and still are—intent on killing Gaara, on either re-sealing the Shukaku into its teapot until another host can be found, or scrapping the jinchuuriki project altogether. They gave up too easily. They failed to see that there was another way, that even after all that had happened, there was still something that could be done with Gaara that didn't involve killing him.

In truth, until relatively recently, the Kazekage didn't see what could be done either—or rather, he didn't believe it could actually be done. He was making it up as he went along, really, sending assassins after Gaara until he could credibly stop doing so, and wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do after that, apart from knowing that he couldn't kill Gaara. But there is still a way he can salvage this situation.

_I can train him to put those destructive powers of his to good use. It was what was done with the first two jinchuuriki, after all, almost immediately after they recovered from the sealing. The discipline that training instilled in them is likely why it took them so much longer to deteriorate than Gaara. There was no time for Gaara, no time—he was not old enough, likely still isn't old enough._

_But it must begin now, if it is ever to start at all._

_It all depends on whether or not Gaara will actually consent to this training. I'm not sure that even I could force him to acquiesce to this, not anymore._

It's ironic, really. For many reasons, the Kazekage had been somewhat relieved when it became clear that neither Kankuro nor Temari had inherited the Magnetism Release from him. A kekkei genkai was more trouble than it was worth, sometimes—not at all easy to control, sometimes, and it had a tendency to draw unwelcome attention; being his children, the pair of them already had enough of that to deal with. The presence of the bloodline in the two of them would have been a powerful asset, of course, but in the long run, Temari and Kankuro were probably better off without it. Free not to fear being kidnapped and experimented on by foreign nin. Free to pursue their own dreams.

The Kazekage had been relieved that neither of his older children possessed his bloodline. But his youngest child is possessed of a power that is cosmetically similar, with the potential to be far more wildly destructive. This child does not possess the bloodline, but is just as much in danger of kidnapping or assassination attempts by foreign powers.

_He must be taught to control these powers of his. He must be taught to ignore the callings of the demon, or at least to level his bloodlust against Sunagakure's enemies._

_He must._

A gust of wind, manufactured and full of chakra, hits his face, and the Kazekage turns to his left to see his daughter with a fan.

The courtyards in Suna where tessenjutsu practitioners practice their skill do not have solid walls surrounding them. If the practitioners were to summon too powerful a chakra-enforced wind from their fans, it could knock over the solid, but relatively flimsy walls used to enclose other training courtyards in Sunagakure. Instead, the walls are perforated, latticework sculpted from rough sandstone. He peers from the diamond-shaped latticework at the sight before him.

Temari is there, practicing, alongside her tutor and roughly half a dozen other kunoichi. Tessenjutsu, like sealing, is an art that in Sunagakure is practiced mostly by women—not that there aren't male practitioners of both, and not that tessenjutsu is practiced anywhere but in Kaze anymore. Her tutor gives her short, brisk orders and Temari carries them out promptly, stances, swings and rushes of chakra, her face earnest and eyes determined. A faint sheen of sweat glistens on her forehead; her long shadow quavers with each step.

Recently, Temari has graduated to using a tessen roughly the length of her forearm when folded, nearly twice as long as the hand-fan sized tessen she started out with. She's strong for her age, both by nature and through training, and handles the tool, a fan that weighs more than twenty pounds, as though it is made of air.

Her fascination with tessenjutsu, as the Kazekage recalls, started young. When Temari was five, she discovered her mother's old fan in a hall closet and tried to pull it out so she could drag it back to her room. The Kazekage had happened upon her just in time to keep Temari from upending the fan on top of herself and presumably inflicting injury upon her person. That day, he'd made her promise to leave the fan where it was. _"If you still want it then, I'll let you use it when you're taller than it is." _Temari's little face twisted in a willful scowl, but she swallowed on her retorts and nodded.

The Kazekage watches his daughter's progress in the courtyard. Though the other kunoichi are moving as well (it's amazing how none of them ever knock into each other, or even seem to come close), swinging their arms back and forth, Temari is easily distinguished. She is the smallest of them, and the only fair-haired head in the bunch; fair hair is not a trait commonly found in Kaze no Kuni natives. When she moves back and forth like this with the tessen in her hand, she looks very much like her mother—slight and agile, all svelte limbs and tousled blonde hair. Green eyes ever looking forward towards the future.

She's certainly taller than that old fan of Karura's now. She might even be tall enough and strong enough to use it. When will she come to him asking about that fan?

He picks up on a trace of chakra, human intermingled with the demonic, a trail leading further south. The Kazekage tears his eyes away from Temari and follows after it.

He's not in a hurry and as he walks, the shadows grow ever longer, and the crowds of shoppers thinner. They are replaced by the influx of men and women getting off of work and looking for a quick supper of deep-fried murtabak or kebabs. Maybe a quick drink, too; pomegranate wine is especially popular this time of year. Not for the first time this year, or month, or week, the Kazekage thinks that he could probably use a drink himself, but he passes by the bars and taverns without a glance.

There's no trace of Gaara in the flesh, though his chakra signature is growing stronger and the Kazekage continues to follow after it. And no one in this neighborhood looks particularly rattled either, and there's no sign of death or destruction, so whenever Gaara passed through here, he must not have made his presence felt. A small group of chunin in fatigues and turbans and veils amble by without seeing him; a woman with her hair hidden beneath a veil ushers a flock of chickens into their coop. He moves on.

From a small courtyard off an alleyway, there comes a frustrated groan. The sight of his older son comes to the Kazekage's eyes, crouched by a wall and frowning down at a puppet laying out on the dust before him.

Chiyo finally decided to make good on her promise to Kankuro recently; he goes up to the home she shares with her far more reclusive brother, the jumbled collection of architecture she actually dares to call a "house" carved into the interior of the far east side of the village wall, twice a week for training. The Kazekage gets the impression that Kankuro has learned much from her, but no impression of what kind of taskmaster Chiyo is, except that she's the sort to send her student's work home with him.

Kankuro's interest in puppetry has existed for as long as he's been aware of the world around him. The ability to produce chakra strings is a skill all shinobi of Sunagakure are required to know, and when he was very small his mother or uncle would attach chakra strings to tiny puppets and make them dance (very clumsily, in Karura's case) for the boy's amusement. As he got older, he used his pocket money to buy snake puppets. Then, more humanoid puppets that had compartments for senbon and poison sacs.

Kankuro isn't the sort to give up easily any more than his sister is. He clambers to his feet and attaches chakra strings to the puppet Chiyo sent him home with. Even the simplest of the old puppet master's creations (as this one most likely is) are complex pieces of work, and difficult for beginners. Kankuro has to ply ten strings to this one puppet to make it work, and even so, he's not having an easy time of it.

Something goes wrong with the chakra strings and the puppet falls to the ground with a clatter of wood and metal parts. Kankuro hisses through his teeth and attaches glistening blue strings, clearly visible and of uneven consistency, to the puppet again. He stands alone in the courtyard, solitary, accompanied only by the puppet and his own shadow.

Gaara's chakra trail beckons and the Kazekage moves on, wondering if Kankuro noticed when his brother passed by the courtyard where he trains alone.

Finally, as the sky has grown to the color of old blood and even the supper crowd has started to head back towards their homes, the Kazekage finds him. Gaara is hovering around a well (said well being utterly deserted apart from the boy himself), looking bored, his blank eyes glazed. His shoulders hunch stiffly under the weight of the gourd on his back, and his outline is made slightly indistinct by the cloud of sand swirling about him.

Guessing from that bored expression on the child's face that Gaara's about to go look for something to maim in order to pass the time, the Kazekage decides that this is the best time in the world to make his presence known and keep Gaara from wreaking havoc tonight.

"Gaara."

_Please let some good come of this._

* * *

1: Murtabak—a pan-fried pancake stuffed with mutton, garlic, egg and onion. It can be eaten with curry gravy, sliced cucumber, onions, and tomato sauce, but in the context of street food, often isn't.


	14. Working Overtime

_Working Overtime_

* * *

The Kazekage is keenly aware of how deserted the open square around the well is as he advances towards his son. There is no blood on the ground, nor any other signs of violence, so he can only assume that any villagers in the square had the good sense to vacate the area when they realized that Gaara was among them. They're learning.

Sunset washes Gaara out, making him seem a purely uniform shade of red. He doesn't appear to have heard his name called out, and only looks up when the Kazekage's shadow falls over his small form. Boredom doesn't quite disappear from Gaara's face, but there is now, with it, a veiled, calculating look. The sand that had been gently swirling about him picks up its pace, tainted with malevolent chakra that only grows darker now. The boy says nothing.

_I can't even tell if he's going to listen to me_.

It ought, he thinks, to be a happy occasion, or at least one with some positive feeling behind it. For untold generations, parents have taken their children out into the wilderness to teach, to train, to prepare them for the world of the shinobi. The Kazekage knew that he would never be able to meaningfully contribute to Kankuro or Temari's training—he is unfamiliar with the finer workings of tessenjutsu; the same goes for puppetry—but he'd also known that Gaara would have abilities roughly equivalent to his own, and had hoped that one day, when Gaara was old enough, he would be able to train the boy in the use of them.

But that day has come far too soon, and where happiness might have been, there is only a weary sense of obligation and duty, and his awareness, ever-present, of the perversion of the parental bond wrought by the Shukaku (_And himself_). He's not doing it because he wants too. He's doing it because he has to, because if the Kazekage will not kill Gaara, he must instead find a way to contain him, to curb his murderous instincts. There's no love in this.

"I expect you at the northern gate, tomorrow, at five-fifteen in the afternoon," the Kazekage tells his son shortly.

Gaara's eyes narrow, the only change in his face. "Why?" A distinctly mutinous note surfaces in his voice.

The Kazekage barely resists the urge to say something deeply scathing, and only manages something slightly less biting. "Because it will change your life," he snaps, despite knowing that something that sounds so sarcastic (but the truth, in a way) isn't likely to pique Gaara's interest.

And, true to form, Gaara does not look even remotely more willing to agree to this than he was before. The sand swirling about him, however, starts to take on a distinctly… _defensive _aura. _Control yourself._

"I want you out there," the Kazekage clarifies, after drawing a deep, steadying breath, "because it's high time that you learned how to properly control that sand of yours."

"I _already _know how," Gaara says, and in the dying sunlight, even his teeth look a little red, as his lip curls back.

"We shall see. Just _be_ there."

At that, the Kazekage turns on his heel and starts back towards the Governmental Complex; he has a feeling that if he says anything more to Gaara he'll do even more damage than he has already. Now, all that's to be done is to see if Gaara will come to him (and the north gate) of his own will.

And the Kazekage's game plan, if he doesn't?

Drag him.

-0-0-0-

All business of the day within the administrative center in Suna's Governmental Complex ends at four-forty-five, fifteen minutes earlier than they normally do—and that is how it will be, five days a week, indefinitely. The councilors are sure to inform their Kazekage that they still disapprove of his decision to train his youngest son in the shinobi arts, but the Kazekage himself pays them no heed. He didn't expect them to change their minds overnight. In truth, he doesn't expect them to change their minds at all. They don't need to.

The Kazekage waits at the northern gate—the guards who have their monthly shifts there have all been informed of what he's doing, and what he plans to do (a safeguard, as much as a matter of convenience), and are unfazed by the sight of their leader standing below, arms crossed and frowning. It's five after five in the afternoon now; the shadows are starting to fall long on the village. If Gaara's planning on coming of his own will, he'll show up soon.

Five-fifteen comes and goes, and no sign of Gaara. _Give him ten minutes. Fifteen at the most. _The Kazekage fights down a wave of irritation. _Then, go looking for him._

Finally, at just shy of five-thirty, Gaara appears out of an alley, sand swirling about him, his shadow misshapen and his shoulders bowed from the weight of the gourd on his back. "You're late," the Kazekage says sharply to Gaara. Gaara says nothing, and simply stares up at him out of veiled eyes.

Deciding that belaboring the point will be counterproductive, the Kazekage motions for Gaara to follow him, and starts out of the northern gate, listening closely to the light, shallow footsteps behind him.

They walk on for another half-hour or so, silent, the only sound the occasional harsh squawk of a vulture and the wary snarl of a lone, tiny sand cat. Gaara betrays no signs of tiredness and his father is only looking out for an attack from him, anyways. They are alone out here; usually, shinobi taking their students out of the village at sundown to train do so to the east, west, and south, where for several miles in any direction there is nothing but flatlands. Here, the terrain is more hilly, all in the shadow of the massive table mountain, Mount Heda. Eventually, they come to a halt in a large, dry, flat wadi.

_This should be a good place to start_, the Kazekage decides, looking around at his surroundings. At the same time, he hears a familiar dry, rattling sound, and turns round to glare down at Gaara. "Don't even think about it."

A great deal more sand than usual has snaked upwards out through the mouth of the gourd on the boy's back. As is typical of him, Gaara does not actually answer him verbally, but the look of contempt on his small, pale face says everything that his silence doesn't: Like you could stop me if I wanted to kill you.

"The guards saw us leave. Together. If you come back to Suna without me, what do you think they'll assume?"

A shrewd look comes into Gaara's green eyes.

"And don't think that killing the guards will be enough to cover your tracks. Your life will become extremely unpleasant if you kill me," the Kazekage asserts darkly. _Not that it isn't unpleasant already, _he adds mentally. _But suffice to say, I don't think you'd be 'living' at all for much longer if you killed me_.

Gaara gives no reply, verbal or non-verbal, for a very long time. He stares straight through his father, who is left to wonder, yet again, if Gaara even listened to him at all. Then, he seems to come back to himself with a start, and nods, slowly, his face half-veiled by the shadows._ Good. He seems to be in a rational mood, at least._

The Kazekage goes to the rock face standing to their left, and in white chalk marks three circles, each one smaller than the last, the latter two within the first. A bull's eye. After that, he goes back to Gaara, kneeling before him, unlatching a kunai holster from his hip and sighing heavily when Gaara takes an immediate step back upon seeing what's inside of the pouch, stiff and wary, his sand all but hissing.

"Have you ever handled kunai before, Gaara?" he asks.

Konoha and Kumo, when first training their children to become shinobi, have them learn to handle and throw kunai by utilizing wooden mock-ups. Wooden mock-ups of kunai (and later, of shuriken) are safer than the real thing; inexperienced children are significantly less likely to slice their hands open or cut off a finger on wood (Indeed, the most they have to fear is splinters). However, Suna does not do so. For one thing, wood is a precious commodity in Kaze no Kuni, even in the northern mountains where trees actually grow, precious enough that they don't waste it on things like weapons that can't even be used to kill people with. Children learn with the same kunai adults use in battle. What Gaara will be using is a keen, steel kunai.

Gaara's eyes momentarily flick away from the kunai to look to the bull's eye drawn on the rock face, before flitting back to the kunai—his eyes fix on it, clearly waiting for his father to attack him with it. In that moment, he puts two and two together. "Why do I need to?" he asks in a rebellious mumble, his voice the rasp of a thing rarely used.

Well, at least he's sharp enough to ask the question. _But he isn't paying attention to the world around him, if he thinks he'll have no need of things like kunai. _"When you take the Academy exam to become a shinobi of this village, part of that test will involve a target-accuracy test for kunai and shuriken. There will be other skills you need to know, other jutsus; I will teach you those."

Gaara pretty obviously doesn't think much of this, if the slight wrinkling of the skin on the bridge of his nose is any indication. The Kazekage glares at him once again, this time with the added benefit of actually being on eye level with the boy—if he recalls, this is probably the first time he's _ever _been on eye level with Gaara, or with any of his children. "You _will _take that test, Gaara, one way or another. And at any rate, there will eventually come the day in which you fight a battle so protracted that you run out of chakra, but will still need to fight." Though, in truth, the only opponent in the relative vicinity the Kazekage knows of who could even hope of winning out in chakra levels over Gaara is the Konoha jinchuuriki, a boy roughly ten months Gaara's junior, it never hurts to put the thought in his mind. "How do you expect to fight at that point without some knowledge of weaponry?"

The Kazekage has no idea if Gaara was swayed by this line of reasoning; the boy's expression never changes as his small hand shoots out to grab the kunai. Gaara examines the kunai closely, hands and eyes roving over the cool, smooth surface; the Kazekage stands and backs away from him to give Gaara some room (And the better to avoid the path of the kunai if it goes wildly enough off course).

After a few more moments of intense scrutiny, Gaara's eyes center on the bull's eye drawn with chalk onto the rock face. He throws the kunai, just as he must have seen his would-be assassins do in the past. The kunai strikes the rock face outside the widest circle, and clatters to the ground.

The Kazekage bites back a sigh.

The fact that the kunai did not go deep enough into the rock to stick doesn't bother him as much as it might others. Gaara is small for his age with slight, frail limbs, veins standing out clearly beneath thin skin and bones plainly visible beneath a too-thin layer of flesh—he doesn't eat well and has never undergone anything resembling strength training. Besides, human flesh, even when protected by a flak jacket, is much easier to penetrate than solid rock.

However, Gaara's aim is abominable, even for someone totally inexperienced with kunai, he's not even holding it right for use as a throwing weapon, and his grip is far too tight for use as a throwing weapon as well. _At least I can correct his grip and posture. _The Kazekage goes to retrieve the kunai, and return it to his son so he can show him the proper way to handle the kunai.

That doesn't go quite as planned.

Kneeling down in front of him, the Kazekage tries to press the kunai into Gaara's hand. "Gaara, that wasn't—"

At the very moment that their hands touch, Gaara jumps backwards as though burned. He snarls like a fennec fox faced with a threat, eyes narrowed to slits. His sand whips around him in thin tendrils, clearly no longer the unconscious movements of a demon's will, trying to keep its host alive. "Don't touch me!" Gaara's high-pitched voice cracks on 'me'; he sounds almost hysterical. "Don't _ever _touch me!"

The Kazekage stares at him for a long moment, at Gaara's lip, still curled back in a soundless snarl, at the way the sparse hairs on his arms stands on end. At the loathing in his face, thick and visceral like the hatred of an animal confronted by its tormentor. The Kazekage turns his face away, and draws a deep, shuddering breath.

"Watch me," he says shortly, climbing back to his feet. The Kazekage demonstrates the proper posture for utilizing kunai as training weapons. "Keep your shoulders up and your feet apart and parallel. Take a forty-five degree step back, so that your left shoulder is facing the target. And as for your grip, while you shouldn't hold the kunai so loosely that if falls out of your hand, you shouldn't hold it too tightly either. If you hold the kunai too tightly, it will lose momentum more quickly once you throw it. You should only keep a tight grip on your kunai when you intend to use it as a stabbing tool."

He throws the kunai and it strikes true, embedding itself in the rock face, in the very middle of the bull's eye. For a second time, the Kazekage retrieves the kunai, wrenching it out of the rock in one swift movement, but this time, he merely holds the kunai out to Gaara, handle first, rather than attempt anything that would involve physical contact. That door is shut.

Gaara throws the kunai again. This time, he adopts roughly the same posture as what his father demonstrated, but the kunai doesn't come any closer to hitting the target than it did the first time he threw it.

Clearly, this is going to take more than a night's work.

-0-0-0-

Over the next few months, the Kazekage leads Gaara out into the desert every afternoon; they stay out there for two to three hours, sometimes four, as the days grow shorter, and then longer again. After about two weeks, he deems Gaara's aim with kunai satisfactory, and they move on to shuriken, a tool Gaara is no more impressed with than he was with kunai, and a tool that presents its own difficulties, completely separate from kunai. However, it only takes him a week longer with shuriken than he did with kunai.

For simple jutsus, the Kazekage has an easier time of it. Gaara is actually interested in learning these techniques, his eyes gleaming keenly whenever a new name is brought to his attention. Chakra strings, he masters quickly, almost as quickly as his brother had done. He can use the basic genjutsu-breaking jutsu within a few nights, make judicious use of Kawairimi in a week, and channel chakra to his feet to walk up sheer vertical surfaces in two. Just on a whim, the Kazekage decides to try to teach Gaara Shunshin, a more advanced technique that Academy students aren't required to learn, but Gaara masters it after three weeks of continual practice, a bit more than most Academy students could claim.

The only techniques Gaara has any trouble with are Bunshin no jutsu, the Clone technique, and Henge. Eventually, he gets to the point where he can maintain an illusion for a few seconds, and can produce a clone that lasts for maybe twenty seconds before dissipating. Gaara's lack of progress past that frustrates him, making the boy irritable and snappish (More so than usual, that is). He clearly wants to succeed.

What drives Gaara to learn these techniques so diligently, the Kazekage doesn't know. Somehow, Gaara doesn't strike him as the sort to value academic achievement. _Perhaps, _the Kazekage muses, _Gaara's realized that he can kill more efficiently with these jutsus in his arsenal_. Gaara's death toll has gone down a fair bit since the Kazekage started to train him; the boy often returns to Suna tired (though no matter how tired he is, he never seems any closer to falling asleep than usual) and spends the majority of the night locked away in his room, away from prying eyes. He still kills, periodically, perhaps just to remind people that he exists and should not be discounted. Perhaps Gaara makes 'practical' use of the things he's learned then.

Whatever the reason, the Kazekage doesn't care much; he's just glad that Gaara has this interest at all, glad that the boy's a fast learner. Sooner of later, Kankuro and Temari will be ready for the Academy Exams (When is a better question; as they grow older and go off to different tutors, it's no longer necessary to have Baki watch them every moment of the day, so the jonin has been put on missions again, and doesn't have as much time to train them). The Kazekage has every intention of making sure that all three of them take the test together, and absolutely _no _intention of making any exceptions for Gaara.

If he can just get Gaara up to genin level, then Gaara can finally serve as the weapon he was meant to be. Frankly, the Kazekage's not sure that he could get Gaara up to _chunin_ level, let alone jonin level, as regards to the requirements for both ranks that don't involve killing people with sand. _I suppose the only way he could become a chunin would be if he took the inter-village Chunin Exams, instead of the Suna chunin exams. _It's probably too much to ask of anyone to get Gaara to any rank higher than genin.

The Kazekage can't help but feel just a bit disappointed when he supplies Gaara with chakra paper and it splits in two instead of crumbling. Wind is the most common nature affinity in Kaze no Kuni (as one can probably gather from the name of the country), and if Gaara ever does show any interest in learning elemental ninjutsu, he'll have no shortage of tutors, if a tutor willing to teach him can be found. However, the Kazekage himself can claim Earth as his nature affinity—another common affinity in Kaze, though not as common as Wind—and he was wondering if _any _of his children would share this trait. Oh well. The Kazekage knows plenty of Wind jutsus as well as Earth jutsus, and elemental ninjutsu of the typical sort isn't what they're covering tonight.

Tonight, the most important aspect of Gaara's training is being covered.

About twenty-five years ago, the Sandaime Kazekage took seven children out into the desert, the same as he takes his son out into the desert.

The Magnetism release is a kekkei genkai that only ever arose in a few. The first was the Sandaime Kazekage, and the fact that all the others were not even remotely related to him or each other makes the present Kazekage wonder, sometimes in frustration (it would be incredibly useful to discover exactly what triggered the kekkei genkai), and sometimes in genuine curiosity, if there had just been something in the water around the time he and the other children had been born.

Whatever the case, around thirty to forty years ago, seven children, five boys and two girls, all born within a time range of about eight years, manifested the same kekkei genkai as their leader, despite not having parents who had the release, despite not being related to each other or the Sandaime. The Sandaime knew the children were a valuable asset to their village, but would only be so if they learned to use their abilities as he had. Thus, he rounded them up and made sure that they learned.

The Yondaime would be lying if he said that he and the other children, who at the time had ranged in age from six to fourteen, had particularly liked each other. If anything, they hadn't gotten along well and on bad days outright hated each other. The Yondaime can remember an incident from just after the training had started. His mother had died recently and he was carrying a gold pendant of hers in his pocket; one of the girls there had said something snide (he can't remember what it was, and can't even remember if she was addressing him) and he'd used his ability to hit her in the forehead with the pendant in his pocket. The Sandaime had never sought to strengthen the bonds between these children. He was forging weapons, not friendships.

Over the years, they learned to fight using the ability they all stared. The seven children grew into five young men and two young women, and were often sent out to fight in Suna's defense (Never to the same battlefield; there tended to be… _difficulties _that arose if two users of the Magnetism release tried to use their abilities on a wide scale at the same time, in the same place). One of them died in the Second War; three, in the Third. One, the Kazekage recalls, died rather recently. The one who could control copper had been crippled during the Third War and was living in one of the shanty towns on the innermost wall surrounding Sunagakure; he refused to be treated by medics when he became ill or go down into the city itself, and someone had just found him dead in his tent one day. Of the seven children, besides the Kazekage himself, there is only one still living; she's in a mental hospital in the northern mountains, grappling with the ravages of advanced mercury poisoning. No one else has emerged since them who can use the Magnetism release.

Remembering all this makes the Kazekage wish for that time, a time when Suna's economy wasn't failing (unemployment's supposed to be up to twenty-five percent this month) and the country wasn't still reeling from the disastrous effects of disarmament from the close of the last war (A term of the treaty he'd signed with the Leaf, just two and a half weeks before Gaara was born). Wish for a time when Kaze could recall its former strength and didn't have to subsist on the contractors the Leaf wouldn't take. Wish for a time when the future didn't seem so bleak.

Anyways…

Over the months, the Kazekage's relationship with his son has not improved. Yes, he's gotten Gaara to address him with something regarding chilly politeness, but that's only on Gaara's good days, and if he holds any respect at all for his father, it is only the respect one feels for a person with power. Gaara remains as hateful as a caged lion brought up from far to the south, and as remote as the moon hanging in the sky.

Tonight is not one of Gaara's good nights. The moon is high in the night sky, full and swollen, white as froth on a cup of ayran. In otherwise silent moments the Kazekage can hear him whispering under his breath, low, hoarse rasps. What Gaara's whispering, the Kazekage can not imagine, but he knows all too well who the boy is whispering _to_.

"Focus consciously on retrieving the bottle from the top of the hill, without moving from where you are, and _without _crushing the bottle."

Gaara's already-present scowl deepens as a long, whip-like tendril of sand snakes out of his gourd and travels up the steep hill before them. This is a problem of Gaara's, the Kazekage has observed throughout the years. Whenever he reaches out and grabs something with his sand, unless that something is extremely well-built, such as a kunai or something else made out of strong, solid metal, it ends up crushed. If Gaara can fine-tune his control over the sand enough that he can retrieve delicate objects without crushing them, that would be an extraordinarily useful skill for missions.

The tendril comes back, and a hail of broken glass, glittering like shards of sunlight under the moon, rains down with it. Gaara's automatic defense protects him from the glass and the Kazekage can more than easily evade the falling glass, but both feel varying degrees of frustration at the failure.

"No, Mother," Gaara half-whispering, no longer trying to lower his voice so his father won't hear. "I don't understand why we're doing this either. I don't understand why we can't just—"

"Gaara!" Glaring green eyes meet glaring brown eyes. Gaara's wearing that alien, ominous look again and it's all the Kazekage can do not to snap "_Don't call the Shukaku 'Mother'!"_ "Take a break for a few minutes. Drink some water."

The boy goes to sit on a rock, his footsteps digging unnaturally deep into the sand and his red-haired head, faded to brown in the darkness, drooping slightly. But he does not drink any water. He doesn't have a canteen with him.

With a sigh, the Kazekage drops to his knees in front of Gaara and unlatches his canteen from his belt. _"Never _forget the golden rules of the desert, Gaara, especially not the one about water. It's not as bad now, since it's night, but if it were daytime you'd be in a bad way without your canteen." He holds the canteen out to Gaara. "Go on and drink some water."

Gaara takes the canteen in his small hands, but he does not drink. He stares at the Kazekage, eyes narrowed, face full of distrust.

_He thinks I'm trying to poison him._

On the most detached level, the Kazekage supposes that it's a good sign that Gaara is so suspicious of someone he views as his enemy—suspicion and awareness of his surroundings is a good trait for a shinobi to naturally possess. However, the belief that an enemy would go so far as to ruin his own canteen in the process of trying to poison him (if the Kazekage really _had _poisoned the water in his canteen, he'd never be able to use the canteen itself again), and that furthermore he would poison the only source of water in the close vicinity, goes beyond the realm of healthy suspicion, and right into paranoia.

_And when… When have I ever tried to poison him? When have I done that? When has anyone trying to kill Gaara _ever _tried to poison him?_

Suddenly, the Kazekage can see in that one look of childish suspicion the reflection of every mistake he's ever made, staring back at him. No, not the ones made as a child himself—getting kunai from Kazuhisa instead of Nariaki, and discovering later that Kazuhisa's kunai were as shoddy as they were inexpensive, or studying the wrong material the night before the Academy graduation exams, or anything like that. He sees the mistakes he's made as regards to Gaara, during his time as leader of this nation.

Moving too slowly, or too quickly. Miscalculating, misjudging, misinterpreting. Misreading the signs. Making him into a jinchuuriki in the first place.

Gaara still has some value for this nation, but at moments like this, all the Kazekage wishes is that he'd never gone ahead with the sealing of the Shukaku in the first place. _I don't know what it was supposed to have been worth…_

The Kazekage roughly takes the canteen from Gaara, uncapping it and taking a brief swig of the water. "It's not poisoned." Just as roughly, the canteen is handed back to Gaara. "If that was what you were wondering."

Clearly not still entirely convinced, Gaara takes only the shallowest of gulps before, much more politely than it had been taken from him, handing the canteen back to his father.

"Let's get back to work."

* * *

**1**: Ayran—ayran is a cold yogurt beverage mixed with cold water and sometimes with salt.  
**2**: The Five Golden Rules of the Desert, Number Two: "Never go into the desert without enough water to last you to your destination. In addition, if you come upon a well or an oasis, take the opportunity to refill any empty water containers."

As for kunai being able to go into a rock face deep enough to stick, in my defense, there were kunai sticking in the walls of the Uchiha compound the night of the massacre (both the wood and the stone). So there's a precedent.


	15. Cat's in the Cradle

_Cat's in the Cradle_

* * *

Temari probably needs new clothes.

The thought crosses the Kazekage's mind at random one morning, as his daughter rushes through the kitchen towards the hot, bright outside world, without a thought for breakfast nor a glance for her father. Kankuro follows soon after, a lumpen, linen-wrapped bundle slung across his back. They're gone in a flash, but not soon enough for the Kazekage to fail to notice that Temari's trousers were a bit short in the leg.

She is at the age for a growth spurt, not that the Kazekage can claim to have ever paid much attention to the ways and at what stages of life children suddenly grow two, three or even four inches practically overnight. Temari's tall for a girl of her age and may well have trouble finding clothes that fit her properly. She probably knows where to look for clothes; that…

And the thought that he's only just now noticed that is a fairly depressing one.

The Kazekage could never claim to have been the most attentive father in the world, and certainly not to his two elder children. Even before Gaara was born, he had still been the leader of this village, fighting a grueling war of attrition against Hi and Tsuchi. He'd had no time for either Temari or Kankuro, and had known them in passing, knowing their personalities only because the two of them insisted on making their personalities known to him.

After Gaara was born, things were no better. Instead of the war, the Kazekage was facing the catastrophic effects of disarmament, the fallout from what the war wrought, and the impact all of this had on the already-floundering economy. He was a bit busy trying to keep the government from falling down about his ears and convincing the Daimyo that it wasn't necessary to cut off funding to Sunagakure—an ongoing struggle, unfortunately, and one that currently isn't going in Suna's favor.

Gaara lost control, and all attention had to be paid to him. Taking one's eyes off of Gaara in the worst of his rages and rampages could very well be fatal—_was _fatal, for a lot of people ill-fated enough to cross the boy's path. Meanwhile, the Daimyo was still pushing for results, whatever those results might have been, and a decision had to be made, regardless of the Daimyo or anyone else's prodding.

Now, the Kazekage's gone right back to worrying about the economy and wondering how much longer Suna will last, the way it is now, if things don't change, and soon. Now, he trains Gaara in how to properly use that sand of his, trying to get his son up to genin level and all the while never turning his back to him. All the while, watching Gaara ratchet up a body count yet again (as of right now, he's killed four in the last month), and wondering if he'd done the right thing after all.

Somewhere in that never-ending mess, somewhere along the line, Temari and Kankuro fell by the wayside. Became barely relevant to the Kazekage's life. They weren't Gaara, whom everyone had to keep a close eye on. They weren't the Daimyo, who constantly threatens budget cuts and cessation of funding. They weren't the councilors, who were pressing for results just as fiercely, but without any teeth in their words. They weren't Suna's floundering economy, straining just to keep from imploding. He _saw _his elder children. Oh yes, he saw them. But somewhere along the line, he stopped _noticing _them.

_I suppose I just didn't see them as particularly important. I handed them over to Baki and focused my attentions on more pressing matters._

_And what exactly have they been to me, anyways?_

He had first become aware that he was going to be a father in the months before he became Kazekage. He'd been excited, for many reasons, and discounted the possibility that being the father of an infant child could hurt his chances to become Kazekage—it's not like that ever proved to be a problem anyways. A child is the herald of immortality, a son the legacy of the future. And if this child could become the host of the Shukaku, then Suna would become strong again.

The unborn child tested negative for compatibility with the Shukaku. Karura had breathed an un-subtle sigh of relief ("Thank all the Gods in heaven," she had muttered) and the Kazekage of two weeks tried not to look too disappointed. He couldn't even be disappointed that his first child was a girl, because Temari was a winsome, charming baby, healthy and alert. But she could not be the jinchuuriki of the Shukaku, so the Kazekage set his sights on the future.

Karura became pregnant again immediately after giving birth to Temari. This child, his first-born son, was also incompatible with the Shukaku. The Third War was entering its bloodiest phase, and the Kazekage had no time to look towards anything but the future.

_And is _this _what they've been to me, all this time? The failed hosts, the abortive attempts to produce a jinchuuriki host, the first two times that failed?_

His eyes glaze over as he stares over the mist rising from his coffee cup. He knows what branches of the shinobi arts Temari and Kankuro plan on going into, but that's only because their interest is so apparent that a blind, deaf, dumb idiot could pick up on their passions. He knows very little else about either of them.

What foods do they like and dislike?

Who are their friends? Do they have friends?

What do they think about their training, their mentors?

What do they think about their chances to become genin?

Where do they want to go in their lives?

The Kazekage knows none of this. Instead, his elder son and daughter are as near-strangers to him. Children who live in his house and share his blood, who pass out of his sight quickly and rarely return to it. The pale shadows on the edge of his awareness, soon to be strangers in entirety.

They're probably better off that way.

* * *

Yes, short, I know. But some of the chapters are going to get shorter towards the end. If I can say what I want to say in a thousand words, I'm happy.

Since I started to write this story, I've realized that I made a mistake on something. It was something I mentioned in one of the early chapters, that Temari and Kankuro were both "full-term babies." Well I just realized that, if it's true of either of them, it's only true of Temari. Kankuro was not born full-term. There's no way he could have been.

Why do I say this? Well, I did some calculations today. Presuming that Kankuro was born in the year immediately following the year Temari was born (which I'm pretty sure he was), presuming that Kankuro was not born on a leap year, and when you include their birth dates, Temari and Kankuro were born eight months and twenty-four days apart. Now, the in-story explanation for this is that the Kazekage (the POV character at the time) was simply mistaken. But it kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?


	16. Tethered

Can you imagine pre-Naruto Gaara in a classroom with other kids, without killing at least half of them? I can't. (Though to be honest, I can't really imagine him showing up to class at all, either.)

* * *

_Tethered_

* * *

"You're taking the Academy graduation exam in two weeks."

Gaara looks up at him with that familiar blank, inscrutable expression on his face, and the Kazekage sighs for what feels like the thousandth time that evening.

They have returned from another long evening of training. Training itself was much the same as normal; Gaara spoke little except to question why he's doing something that he doesn't understand why he's doing, or to whisper to his 'Mother.' It wasn't productive so much as it was tiring, but that's not terribly out of the usual either.

In Sunagakure, citizens don't have to go to the Academy to take the graduation exams, which is useful, since the Kazekage wouldn't trust Gaara not to kill or at least severely maim his classmates, and because he _knows _that Gaara never would have passed the mandatory psychological evaluations all Academy students were required to pass in order to take the classes offered there. The graduations exams are held once every three months for anyone who feels as though they're ready to take them; if a citizen can pass those exams, they're considered skilled enough to become shinobi of Sunagakure. Kankuro and Temari will be taking them as well, in two weeks' time.

"You're taking the Academy graduation exam in exactly two weeks' time, Gaara. On the Thursday morning after this following one, Temari and Kankuro will head to the Academy at eight in the morning; they're taking it too. Just follow them."

Face half-buried in shadow, Gaara's eyes narrow. His small arms are folded across his chest; it's a posture his father often adopts and said posture seems to have rubbed off. "Why should I take it?" he asks, tilting his head slightly to one side.

_Here we go again. _"So you can become a shinobi of this village."

"Why should I want to become a shinobi?" Gaara asks, the challenge more apparent in his voice now than before.

The Kazekage fights the urge to say something that would probably sour Gaara on the concept altogether. After a moment of reining in his blunt, irritated tongue, he says, "Because as a shinobi, a genin, you will be sent on missions that will allow you to kill targets and enemies of this village, without censure."

Those will probably be the only sort of missions he'll be able to send Gaara on. Allowing Gaara out of the country would leave the boy vulnerable to kidnapping and Kaze vulnerable to the repercussion of his potential actions on foreign soil—it wouldn't be so bad in one of the minor nations, but imagine if Gaara went on a rampage in Hi or Tsuchi… And if the Kazekage puts Gaara on a mission where he isn't supposed to be killing people, the mission will probably turn into one where Gaara kills people.

If he becomes a shinobi at all.

Gaara gives no verbal response—it's impossible to know if any of this is getting through to him. But his eyes flicker slightly, and he goes inside the Complex without another word.

-0-0-0-

He gets the results three days after the three of them take the exam.

Though he is loath to admit it, the Kazekage was starting to get a bit nervous, if only because in the past it didn't usually take the proctors this long to send out results or success or failure in the Academy graduation exams. The Kazekage would like to believe that the delay was due to there being more test-takers than usual, but he knows better; there were just twenty taking the exam this time, the lowest number in the last five years.

The chunin who handed him the manila envelope bows out of the office quietly, and the Kazekage rips it open impatiently.

He smiles a little to see Temari's results; '_Ranking: 1 out of 20_', the highest in the group. Not surprisingly, Kankuro's done very well too, scoring high marks in all categories. From what little he's seen, the two of them are devoted enough to their training that their grades ought to reflect that.

As for Gaara…

Gaara's grades are not so good.

The Kazekage's brow furrows as he looks over Gaara's grades. The best he scored was an eight out of ten in chakra control; he barely passed, altogether. As the Kazekage looks over Gaara's grades, seeing the boy's poor scores in areas he'd shown aptitude or at least healthy interest in when his father was training him, the Kazekage starts to get the impression that Gaara did this on purpose. On second thought, that's exactly what Gaara's done; there's no way he got so low a grade in Kawairimi without it being on purpose.

_If he was trying to send a message, it certainly got across. But Gaara still passed, and he _is _a shinobi of Sunagakure now, with all that that entails. He will come to understand what that means._

-0-0-0-

He can sense the newfound pride in Temari and Kankuro when he sees them next, both wearing their newly issued hitai-ate prominently. Kankuro seems especially pleased; now that he's a genin, he'll be able to take the examinations to become a recognized puppeteer of Sunagakure. Baki seems satisfied with his charges' success, though he's better at smoothing that pride and pleasure down behind a mask of stoicism. Gaara looks bored, and the hitai-ate he was issued is nowhere to be seen.

Gaara's is the only expression that doesn't change when the Kazekage tells them that they are now a team.

Baki's jaw tightens, and over the heads of his three students, he nods briefly. He understands that his duty is still to protect Temari and Kankuro, but that his mandate has just grown a little more specific, and wider at the same time.

Kankuro opens his mouth as though to protest, eyes flickering to his younger and older siblings in turn, color rising in his cheeks. Temari tugs on his wrist and shakes her head. She looks stricken, mouth held in brittle lines, but her eyes are resolute, and resigned. She looks old. "We understand," she tells the Kazekage tonelessly, and Kankuro nods, not shaking his sister's grip on his wrist.

There is some level of symbolism in having all three of them in the same genin cell—the leader's children presenting a united front to the world. It's the pragmatic thing to do, having Gaara and Temari and Kankuro n the same cell. It "looks good", to both the other nations and to the powers that be within Kaze no Kuni.

More than that, the Kazekage can't think of anyone else in the country who would take on Gaara as a student, or as a teammate. He'd prefer that Gaara be with people he knows and who know him. He'd prefer that Gaara be with people he knows he can't kill without the consequences being severe indeed.

Kankuro and Temari will suffer for it; the Kazekage has no doubt of that. But they'll survive, and hopefully be stronger for it. Gaara must be tied to this village, and this is the best way to do it.

* * *

I also can't imagine that Gaara was ever let out of the country while his father was still alive; my guess is the Chunin Exams were the first time he ever went outside of Kaze's borders. And I'm sorry for the delay in updates; I've been dealing with deadlines, midterms, and research papers. One thing at a time.


	17. When They Come Home

_When They Come Home_

* * *

Any missions that require a full cell take them out of the village and into one of the other provinces of Kaze no Kuni. There is not a single client in Sunagakure who would accept Gaara as a shinobi handling their case; they all know better. However, many of the towns in the other provinces are either unaware of Gaara's reputation or believe it to be grossly exaggerated. This will work to Suna's advantage in the attempt to prove Gaara's worth to the country.

The results of the first mission are… mixed.

A client came from Mikan Alskirh, wanting a rival in the silk trade killed. He'd have done it himself, he explains, mopping sweat from his brow (_"Is it really this hot in Suna all the time?"_), but when a civilian kills their rival personally, it's murder, not business. He'd stared dubiously at the trio of young genin who were presented to him, and it had taken nearly half an hour for the Kazekage to convince him not to take his business elsewhere, if _this _was the best that Suna could field. The trader was quite wealthy and was offering a lot to have his rival taken care of; it wouldn't have done to lose him. _Let us test Gaara's mettle._

The four of them trudge back into Suna a week later, three days behind schedule.

Temari delivers the mission report, holding her right arm stiffly. She has the faintly ill look of one who has experienced a great shock, but has also had time to somewhat get over it. The report is in Baki's hand, but Baki himself is not there—he's in the hospital, Temari says tersely, to explain why they were so late getting back. They had to make a lot of stops, you see.

According to the mission report, they arrived at Mikan Alskirh on schedule. The target lives on an estate beyond the city walls, and they caught him on his way home, on a deserted road at dusk. With the sort of complacency that can only be experienced by a rich civilian who has no conception of the fact that others hate him, he walked alone, with neither companions nor bodyguards of any kind.

Gaara was the one who killed him; it's only natural that it would be him, as he, unlike his siblings, has experience with killing people, and Baki knows better than to get in Gaara's way. As specified in the contract, Gaara did not crush his victim beyond recognition; the victim needed to be recognizable in order for him to be declared dead and for the client to buy out his rival's business.

But then, two more people came walking up the path, coming upon the gory scene.

It's standard practice in Sunagakure assassination missions not to kill witnesses unless the shinobi think that said assassins could give away their identities and compromise their safety in the field. Baki and his team could have easily escaped before the witnesses got a good look at their faces, or before they even saw them at all; they were standing in the shadows of the sparse trees on the side of the road. However, Gaara had other ideas.

Gaara attempted to kill the two witnesses, in much the same way he'd killed the target. Temari and Kankuro jumped forward to try to stop him, and found themselves on the receiving end of his fury instead. Baki ordered the two of them to fall back and himself tried to keep Gaara from killing the witnesses. He was unsuccessful, and ended up needing medical attention himself.

The Kazekage sighs, rubbing his forehead wearily. The mission was a success, to the extent that the target was killed and Sunagakure has been paid what it was promised. The revenue gained from this mission is only a tiny dent in its ailing economy (not that any of the other towns or the Daimyo cares; none of them seem to understand that if Sunagakure goes, they all go down with it), but any bit of revenue is still welcome. From a certain point of view, the mission was a success.

However, even if the target was disposed of, the Kazekage can't think of this as a victory, for Gaara still seems incapable of controlling himself once he's tasted blood. Once blood has passed his lips and fingers, he is unmanageable.

_I'll have to draw it out of him, _the Kazekage resolves, mouth thinning in a grim line. _He has to learn to exercise control._

-0-0-0-

"Have you gone over the diagrams I gave you?"

Grit blows in their faces and gathers in their collars from the blisteringly hot midsummer wind; even after dark, there settles over the desert an oppressive heat, clinging to skin and tongue. Even without the sun beating down on him, the Kazekage can feel sweat pooling in his collar. He ignores it, and fixes his eyes on his son.

Gaara is going on enough missions that require reconnaissance beforehand now that the Kazekage can think of no better technique to teach him than the Third Eye. Mastering all the technical details of the jutsu, of the anatomy of the eye and how to channel his chakra to the eye in order to see through it, will be difficult, but it will help Gaara's concentration, and improve his chakra control. Maybe being able to set his mind to one specific task without said mind straying to the desire for bloodshed will help him as well.

Standing in the shadow cast by the rock face above them, the boy nods silently. There is an unnatural stillness about Gaara in his calm moments, when he stands as stock-still as the statues in the council chamber. His skin appears as though carved from marble.

"Let's see it, then."

Gaara stretches his hand out, gathering up the sand at his feet rather than the chakra-charged sand in his gourd; the Kazekage doesn't know his reasoning for this, but doesn't question it (And all the better if Gaara can perform such an advanced technique with sand not saturated with his chakra). The eye forms, dripping sand and possessing a brown iris, perhaps brown because of the times he's seen his father demonstrating the Third Eye. "Can you see with it?" the Kazekage asks.

For a moment, Gaara looks almost hesitant, as though he's not sure how to answer the question, and the Kazekage realizes that he's going to revise his question. "Can you see _clearly _through the Third Eye?"

Gaara shakes his head, and the Kazekage supposes he shouldn't be surprised, though all the same, after all the time it took him to convince Gaara that he would need this technique at all, it's all he can do not to throw his hands up in the air and just give up. "Alright. I want you to watch how I do it, and then we'll go over how to channel your chakra again. If that's not the problem, then I want you to go back to studying the diagrams, and we'll practice this tomorrow night."

As they go over the exact way Gaara is supposed to channel chakra to the Eye in order to use it as a visual medium, the Kazekage's mind is not entirely on his work.

Fewer clients are coming to Sunagakure with each month that passes. The other provinces have it even worse; Saumdhaara in Wat'e hasn't received contracts for anything other higher-paying than C-Ranks in over a month. They, the clients, they all keep going to Hi no Kuni instead, protesting Kaze's high rates. Suna keeps losing business and revenue. Inflation is skyrocketing; the only reason the currency hasn't been debased beyond recognition is the moratorium on minting currency. The Daimyo's been hinting for a while now that if things keep going the way they are (helped along by said Daimyo's profligacy), he'll start cutting funding to a system that "clearly isn't pulling its weight." _Oh, here's the pot calling the kettle black._

The Kazekage would prefer to be back in Sunagakure finishing his paperwork, handing out mission assignments, scheduling meetings. At times like this, it feels as though anything would be more productive than going out into the middle of nowhere and trying to teach Gaara how to perform a surveillance technique. Come to think of it, the Kazekage can't think of anything that _wouldn't _be more productive than this, possibly apart from dying.

As the night wears on, little progress is made. Gaara grows increasingly frustrated, and increasingly snappish, sand swirling about his feet and striking the Kazekage's arm at some point, for an infraction the man can't name. Green eyes narrow to slits as Gaara attempts the Third Eye one last time, tosses his head in frustration and starts to stamp back towards the village. Normally at least somewhat interested in learning things that make it easier for him to kill people, Gaara seems to have had enough for one night. The Kazekage sees no point in dragging this out any longer either. "We'll continue going over the Third Eye tomorrow night. In the meantime, continue studying the diagrams I gave you."

Gaara gives no visible sign that he heard him; the Kazekage is given the sight of his son's back, and nothing more. His pace is slow, laboring under the weight of the gourd on his back. When Gaara doesn't need to get somewhere quickly, he always walks like this, like an old man with a bad back and aching legs. The Kazekage can hear his slightly arduous, strained breathing, far more easily than he ought to be.

He wonders what Karura would make of this. Not all of this, the big picture, but just this scene, of Gaara walking home frustrated and angry at having failed to perfect a jutsu. Of Gaara with his back bent and his shoulders bowed from the weight of the gourd on his back, breathing like his steps are difficult. Of his father, walking two paces behind him, watching him, tired and frustrated himself, but mostly tired, so tired of living with the consequences of his mistake.

The Kazekage can't imagine whether Karura would feel pity or just anger at this sight, with the knowledge that she was right in her mind. With Karura, it could just as easily be either one; while she was alive, whether her heart turned to empathy or anger at such scenes depended on a number of things understood only by herself.

Either way, he knows she wouldn't be happy, and wishes she could be.

-0-0-0-

Over time, Gaara gradually masters use of the Third Eye, and his behavior while on missions improves marginally. Baki's gotten to the point where he can give the boy orders and Gaara will actually follow them instead of simply disregarding his "sensei"; the Kazekage would have to declare himself inhuman if he tried to claim he wasn't impressed. However, Gaara's teammates have to exert every bit of effort they possess to keep him from going on rampages if the mission doesn't go just so, and oftentimes one of them ends up injured in the attempt.

One mission takes them over the far western border of Kaze no Kuni, beyond the borders of the shinobi nations and into Mazar territory; it wasn't supposed to, but the four of them were pursuing fleeing shinobi and they crossed the border into foreign territory without at first realizing it. While on foreign soil, Gaara went on a rampage. Thankfully, they weren't anywhere near a population center when this happened. Kaze doesn't have much of a relationship, positive or negative, with the Mazar, but the Kazekage shudders to think of what would have happened if Gaara had been near a city or even a small town when he gave himself over to the Shukaku's bloodlust; the last thing Kaze needs is another war. At least this way, all he has to do is pen a letter of apology.

When they come home, Temari, Kankuro and Baki always look exhausted, even if they aren't injured. Pale and shadow-eyed, the jonin, the tessenjutsu user, the puppeteer, all skirting away from the smallest member of their party. The one who shows no signs of exhaustion, except from the slope of his shoulders and the slight whistle of his breath. The one who goes stalking off into the shadows, whispering to a voice that only he can hear.

Sunagakure continues its slow decline, the Kazekage watching Kaze's erstwhile clients take their business elsewhere, and Suna's own tradesmen leave for greener pastures (So to speak).

In March of 2567, it finally happens.

The Kazekage licks his lips as he looks at the letter, the Daimyo's seal on the envelope and the bottom of the letter beside his signature gleaming in the sunlight. He feels sick.

Citing the "lack of productivity" on the part of Kaze no Kuni's shinobi, the Daimyo has cut funding to certain institutions of shinobi life. Funding to the educational system has been slashed clean in half. ANBU's funding has been ceased altogether. More will follow, it is promised, in no uncertain terms, if the productivity of Kaze shinobi does not improve.

The Kazekage stares down at the paper, struggling to make it sink in. It is uncomfortably warm in his office—the air conditioning has broken down, once again—but he feels cold to his fingertips. This is his nightmare given form. The cities of Gerfe Wadina and Saumdhaara both have been sending him missives for months, saying that if funding is cut they'll have to shut down their Academies, both pleading with him to speak with the Daimyo on their behalves. Now the proliferation of shinobi in the provinces they belong to will halt altogether, and Sunagakure's Academy will have to downsize, to say the least. The city will have to cut the teachers' salaries in half, or even more so; at least two of the classes will be removed altogether. _God, think of the lay-offs_.

And as for ANBU, Suna's council has been trying to make provisions for keeping the organization's members paid if funding is cut, but now the operatives will be working for practically nothing (Suna can't afford to lay off _any _members of ANBU at times like this). _I suppose I should be grateful for ANBU's devotion to keeping the village strong and safe._

Suna needs more clients, and it can afford to lower mission rates even less now than it could before. They need a solution, and the Kazekage can provide none that won't plunge the country into further chaos and hardship. What to do, what to do…

Then, one day, the Kazekage receives a letter from the leader of Ta no Kuni.*

* * *

*Ta no Kuni = The Land of Rice Fields. The shinobi of the land are at this point secretive enough that a remote nation like Kaze no Kuni, who is not near it and has its attentions on other matters, isn't aware of the name change.


	18. Drastic Times, Drastic Measures

And so comes the beginning of the end.

* * *

_Drastic Times, Drastic Measures_

* * *

_To the Honorable Yondaime Kazekage, Military Governor of Kaze no Kuni,_

_I am to understand that you are currently experiencing hardships within your land. I myself have experienced similar privation within my own homeland, and believe that our two nations could perhaps be of aid to one another. If you will consent, I will come to your city to discuss this at length._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Orochimaru, Lord of the Land of Oto no Kuni, once known as Ta no Kuni_

The letter is short, to the point, the handwriting long, slanted, almost sibilant, if handwriting can be sibilant. The wax seal on the envelope and off to the side of the signature depicts an Ouroboros, two snakes devouring each other, and a musical note—the Kazekage couldn't say which; he's never been much involved with music—in the middle. But never mind that. The letter itself is interesting enough.

Though Ta no Kuni was a minor nation of little importance, rumors had still reached the Kazekage's ears, after the assassination of the local leader there. According to rumor, a new leader had risen, uniting the land that had since long before its inception been a haven for bandits, exiles and missing nin. Evidently the rumors were correct, and look at the identity of the unifier! Of all the places people expected Hi no Kuni's most notorious missing nin to end up, the Kazekage doubts anyone expected him to surface as the leader of a small nation in the north. If this isn't someone simply claiming to be one-third of Konohagakure's famous Sannin, then this is a very interesting matter indeed, and one that could benefit Kaze no Kuni for the sort of leverage it would gain over both Hi and the newly-named Oto.

As for the intimations of an offer of alliance…

The Kazekage's first impulse is to dismiss it out of hand. True, it would sting his pride deeply if the situation was reversed and he was the one putting out feelers for an alliance with a small, weak, unimportant nation, but coming into an alliance from either angle puts him in a bad position. Offering an alliance makes Kaze look weak, and accepting one makes Kaze beholden to the one who offered it in the first place.

And when has an alliance ever done Kaze any good? Kaze has had three alliances in its history as a nation of accepted shinobi, all with Hi no Kuni. The first was in the days before the First War, brokered by the Shodai Kazekage and the Shodai Hokage. It was broken over the territorial disputes that led to the First War. The second was formed during the First War, after the Shodai Kazekage was assassinated in his old age and it was clear to both nations that Tsuchi was a more virulent enemy to them than they had ever been to each other. That treaty was broken when Hi no Kuni, in the grips of a famine, again began attempting to expand its territories, leading to the outbreak of the Second War.

Now, Kaze is in the midst of a third treaty with Hi, an alliance formed at the end of the Third War, an utterly humiliating affair, and it has done Kaze no good. Her economy ails and her clients move to Hi no Kuni, preferring a nation with wealth enough to charge comparably low prices for their services.

Kaze no Kuni must be able to stand on its feet by itself if ever the nation is to thrive again. Allies are erratic and unreliable; they're just as likely to knife you in the back as they are to actually help you. And what sort of leader is he, the Kazekage, if he can't lead and defend and give aid to his people without relying on outsiders to help him? What kind of leader is he?

All the same…

The Kazekage leans back in his chair and sighs as he holds the letter up to the light, the ink on the page glittering in the sun. He has no assurance that this will do anything to help, has no assurance that it won't in fact make the problems of Kaze no Kuni worse. And either way, this makes him look weak, makes him beholden to outsiders, yet again. It won't do anything to help Kaze stand on its own feet without outside help.

But the Kazekage isn't sure he has any choice anymore.

_To Orochimaru, Lord of the Land of Oto no Kuni,_

_When you come to Kaze no Kuni, fly your standard clearly so you will be recognized._

_Signed,_

_The Yondaime Kazekage, Military Governor of Kaze no Kuni_

-0-0-0-

The delegation from Oto no Kuni arrives early in May, hooded and cloaked, their leader at the head of the party. They fly their standard, the Ouroboros circling the musical note (which the Kazekage is still not sure of, but research has led him to believe is maybe an eighth note), white on a deep green background. Given that the standards of the five major nations are simply the characters, in the common tongue, for the elements in their names, on a white background, this is something of a change.

There are six, and as they come into shade and relative cool of the Governmental Complex, four remain hooded and silent. The other two, however, those at the head of the party remove their hoods as they step forward.

One is a young man with incongruously white hair, wearing glasses with round frames and thick lenses. A smile constantly hovers about his lips, thin and secretive and false. He stands just as the shoulder at the man at the head of the group.

With long black hair, a narrow, unnaturally white face, thin, pointed nose and slanted golden eyes, this can only be Orochimaru. The Kazekage has seen his face many times in the Bingo Book, and few would claim to be able to easily forget such a face as this. He looks as though he is wearing a mask of bleached flesh.

Standing before them in full ceremonial dress, veiled with two guards at his back (he seriously doubts that there is anything these people could do to him, but appearances must be maintained and it never hurts to be careful), the Kazekage waves them inside. Orochimaru only smiles, the wide, mirthless grin of a man with everything to gain.

-0-0-0-

"Get to the point. You said that you could aid Kaze no Kuni; what exactly did you mean by that?"

Perhaps that response was a bit brusque, but the Kazekage has quickly discovered that being polite is not enough to keep Orochimaru on track. The man insisted on spending the better part of a quarter of an hour exchanging pleasantries, asking after kin and such, and now that the pleasantries have been left behind, Orochimaru seems to be having a great deal of difficulty getting to the point, bringing up instead irrelevant topics such as rainfall patterns and the geography of the land. The longer this goes on, the more the Kazekage suspects that he's being played for a fool and the angrier he becomes.

However, Orochimaru seems neither angry nor offended. He balances his chin on his long fingers and smiles again, wide and curling, not showing teeth this time; golden eyes flash. "Hmm, I see you are eager to get down to the reason why I have come here, aren't you?"

The Kazekage says nothing to that, only glares. Dealing with leaders of other nations when they're not being cooperative has always been a dicey business, even when said leaders rule over only minor nations. However, if Orochimaru is determined not to maintain typical dignity, the Kazekage supposes he can get away with glaring through the whole meeting. The fact that his eyes are the only feature of his face currently visible only accentuates the act, or so he hopes.

Orochimaru snorts slightly, the smile fading from his face ever so slightly as a more serious, calculating gleam comes into his eyes. "It seems to me that we have a common enemy," he remarks in his low, rattling voice. "Your northern neighbor and my southern neighbor, Hi no Kuni."

_So, here we are. _"Are you proposing a joint offensive?"

To this, Orochimaru looks over to the young man standing behind his chair—an aide, it seems, rather than a bodyguard. "Kabuto?"

He pulls a scroll from the folds of his cloak and holds it out to the Kazekage. "Kazekage-sama, if you will just read this…"

The boy reminds him of Yashamaru. Smiling often, lying often. Every time the boy, apparently named Kabuto, says something, the Kazekage gets the sense that he's lying about something. He's not sure what, not sure if the lies are in his words, in the expression on his face, or in the tone of his voice, but the Kazekage's sure that Kabuto's lying about _something_, even if he can't pinpoint exactly what he's lying about. It's just a touch unsettling, another thing that makes him thankful for the veil obscuring his face from the bridge of his nose down.

Kabuto hands him the scroll, and the Kazekage unrolls it to see exactly what Orochimaru is proposing. When he reads the words and realizes their meaning, it's as though a lightning bolt has split his brain in two.

"Well?" Orochimaru asks with a thin-lipped, almost predatory smile.

"We'll meet again tomorrow morning at nine. I must speak with the advisory council."

"Of course."

-0-0-0-

For once, the councilors are of one mind concerning something that doesn't involve having Gaara killed. Orochimaru's proposal is one that, under normal circumstances would be completely untenable and considered only as an absolute last resort. Indeed, even now they and the Kazekage both take this as a sign that Orochimaru has become a radical, if he wasn't one already. And now, now all of the councilors agree that this once utterly unreasonable course of action is the best course they can take, to give Kaze no Kuni back some of its former vitality.

"_We need only your consent, Kazekage-sama, and the village will begin preparing for war."_

Sitting at his desk, watching the sun go down over the buildings and city walls of Sunagakure, the Kazekage rubs at his eyes and draws a deep breath. He had thought thirteen years ago that he had his fill of war. He still thinks it now, that he's had his fill of war, watching it cripple the nation and turn out gaunt, haunted soldiers. War never did Kaze no Kuni any good, any more than restructuring after it and forming alliances with former enemies has done.

And that's what this plan will ultimately lead to, after all. The forces of Oto and Kaze will raze Konohagakure, thus crippling the main hub of the nation's economy—the heart of the shinobi forces within Hi no Kuni. Their ability to accept clients and carry out missions for them will be all but non-existent, until such time as the main forces can relocate to one of Hi's other cities (Unlike Kaze no Kuni, Hi no Kuni's shinobi forces are based entirely out of Konohagakure). This will no doubt be a help to Kaze no Kuni, as Hi's former clients will now have to look elsewhere and Kaze is the closest nation that can provide competent help.

However, eventually, Hi no Kuni's military will regroup and launch an attack on its southern neighbor. The assassination of the Hokage is essential to this plan, to leave the shinobi forces leaderless, but eventually they will pick a new leader and they will remember who killed their long-lived, much-beloved Sandaime Hokage. The Kazekage can not predict how long the war will last, but he knows that it will be fierce and ruinous, fought by a nation desperately seeking revenge.

Best case scenario: Kaze no Kuni picks up Hi no Kuni's clients and claims the southern half of the nation for much-needed farmland. That was something Orochimaru offered as well; Kaze gets Hi's southern half, and Oto claims the northern half of the nation. Worst case scenario: Kaze loses the war, Oto abandons them and they are now left to deal with a vituperatively vengeful Hi no Kuni.

He can do nothing, and continue to watch his homeland slide deeper into decline and stagnation. He can commit to this course of action, and watch it perhaps go up in flames instead. If the Kazekage does nothing, Suna will probably face oblivion in a few years anyways.

So, what to do?

That question seems enormous now, and all the roads lead him in the same direction.

War.


	19. None So Blind

_None So Blind_

* * *

The news of the coming joint operation with Oto no Kuni is to be kept a secret from the local shinobi populace as long as possible, and from the civilians, hopefully until after the operation itself is already underway. The time until announcement of the operation to the shinobi of Kaze no Kuni is being used to ferret out any possible spies and infiltrators, and even the traitors in the ranks—the Kazekage usually green-lights pretty thorough searches, but now the blanket searches are so time-consuming that even the ANBU are starting to complain about the workload.

New kunai and shuriken are being pressed and issued at break-neck speed. If anyone asks, they're told that Suna is looking into a more efficient cutting edge for their weapons, and to be honest, it's the truth. It's not like anyone's really complaining, though; the sudden need for mass-production has led to an influx of new jobs, and serves as a temporary salve to Kaze's ailing economy.

The Kazekage tells himself that this must be done, that it's too late to back down now and that the destruction of Hi no Kuni is the only road left open to Kaze's salvation. _If we are to be destroyers and conquerors, let us be that without a backwards glance. _But two weeks before he's to make the announcement to Suna's shinobi, the Kazekage comes to a stark realization: He's being played for a fool.

"Damn it!" he mutters, the lamp at his side sputtering as he looks over the operation specs and the letter he's just received again and again, and puts together what had up to now been nothing more than a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He'd first gotten the suspicion that something might be wrong when Orochimaru told him how many shinobi he was deploying, just one hundred. _"One hundred shinobi will not be enough to take a nation as vast as Hi no Kuni," _the Kazekage had protested. _"Your faith in your men is admirable, but it simply can't be done." _To that, Orochimaru had only laughed and said that one hundred would be sufficient. When the Kazekage had remarked that Oto no Kuni was hardly putting forth equal effort, as Kaze was planning to field at least three thousand for the initial assault alone, Orochimaru shrugged and said that Oto, being small and new, could hardly muster the same strength.

Then, there was Orochimaru's insistence of an early August date for the assault on Konoha.

"_I feel that it would be wiser to wait until October."_

"_I had considered that, Kazekage-san, but I still hold that August will be best. If you waited until October, you might well still be in Hi come winter, and I fear that the operation will fall to ruin in that case."_

All fine and well, but there is a larger problem still with the exact date Orochimaru is proposing.

The inter-village Chunin Exams are to be in Konohagakure this year, and the Hokage was quite delighted indeed when Sunagakure's reclusive Kazekage for once consented to visit Konoha for the third portion of its section of the inter-village Chunin Exams. The assault is to begin during the Third Exam, with the Kazekage being left to assassinate the Hokage. There are, the Kazekage can immediately point out, a number of problems with this.

It's been years since the lottery last fell on Suna to host the inter-village Chunin Exams, but the Kazekage still recalls quite vividly exactly what goes in to planning it. On any given day during any other time, only about half of a country's shinobi forces are present in its capital at a time; the rest are dispersed out in the countryside or in other nations for missions, personal leave, and so on. However, during the Chunin Exams, the percentage of shinobi present in the capital of a nation rises to roughly eighty-five percent for security reasons. Security, employing both the regular forces and the ANBU heightens so drastically that, for once, a hidden village looks like the armed camp it started out as. Oh yes, it gets all the shinobi in one place, but attempting to attack, let alone destroy a hidden village while it's hosting the Chunin Exams is nothing short of folly.

And Orochimaru wants Gaara to be present for the initial assault as well. In fact, he's proposing that Gaara and his teammates (whom Orochimaru doesn't seem to realize are related to each other or the Kazekage in any way) join the Chunin Exams in Konohagakure and spend upwards of a solid month there with only the most minimal supervision. _This _is completely untenable. Gaara is an international incident waiting to happen; the Kazekage _can't _let him out of the country, out from under his watch, for _any _length of time, let alone more than a month. And quite frankly, there's no way in Hell he's knowingly putting Kankuro and Temari anywhere near Gaara if he's been given an order to kill every foreign shinobi he lays eyes on; there's too much risk of collateral damage. _I ought to be able to think of them as just two more soldiers by now, but I suppose that's just an impossibility. No. No I will not deliberately put them in serious risk of being killed by their brother._

On this, Orochimaru eventually concedes the Kazekage's point and settles for having Gaara join in later, but the Kazekage has to wonder why Orochimaru ever thought that was a good idea to start with. He's been in Sunagakure long enough to see just what Gaara gets up to, even with the improved control over his sand and his impulses that the boy possesses. You'd think he'd have learned by now.

But the final nail in the coffin for the Kazekage's suspicions comes in the form of the letter he's just received.

Just as Oto officials have been in Sunagakure, the Kazekage sent two of his councilors to Otogakure to assist them and keep him apprised of developments there. One of them has just written to him. In no way is Otogakure preparing for a prolonged conflict. They aren't producing weapons on a mass scale, nor are they amassing other materials of war. They aren't storing food. They aren't issuing general summons to the shinobi of the nation. They are doing nothing, and this just cements the Kazekage's suspicion that he has been deceived.

Orochimaru isn't planning to wage war against Hi no Kuni. He just wants to destroy Konohagakure, and use Kaze no Kuni as his patsy. Why, the Kazekage can't tell. With all the pieces of the puzzle in place, Orochimaru's "joint offensive" is transparently obviously a sham, but just _what_ he wishes to accomplish is still quite opaque. His plan doesn't make any sense; the Kazekage can't make rhyme or reason of it no matter how hard he tries.

That doesn't matter. As it stands, something must be done.

The Kazekage glares darkly down at all the specifications, and the letter he's received. He's been played for a fool; that seems obvious to him now, and he wonders how he hadn't been able to see it from the start. _I must have been blind and desperate not to see this for a sham. He was nothing more than a viper trying to get into the nest, and I couldn't see it. How far could this have gotten if I hadn't gotten this letter? Would I have only realized Orochimaru was using Suna for his own ends when the Sound ninja disappeared in the middle of our attack on Konohagakure?_

Orochimaru and his underlings (only one of whom, Kabuto, still remains in the city at the moment) will have to be expelled from Sunagakure, their fledgling alliance scrapped. To that end, there will have to be a confrontation.

_Outside of the village should be better_, the Kazekage muses. _This could very well lead to violence, and Orochimaru has a reputation for incurring a great deal of collateral damage when he fights. At least somewhere away from the village, there's less likely to be civilian casualties._

A flicker of doubt stops him cold for a moment, before he brushes it away.

_It should be fine. He may not even risk a fight over it._

-0-0-0-

Perhaps he had been too arrogant, the Kazekage decides later, and karma, though he's never understood the concept very well, is punishing him for the arrogance of entertaining the thought that Orochimaru had, like so many shinobi past their prime, come to rest on their laurels. As he has discovered in this moment, he certainly had not.

It was over pathetically quickly. The Kazekage wasn't even able to get a shot of his own in before he was lying face down on the ground, the two guards he'd brought with him dead, and he himself gagging on his own blood. Grasping thought remarkably well for a man in his condition, he revises his opinion: He _was _arrogant, to know the sort of reputation Orochimaru has and to think that he could be alone with him where no one could see, and lower his guard for even a moment.

It occurs to the Kazekage that perhaps he should be more concerned about the fact that he's dying, but really, that seems… It just seems… It just seems really quite unreasonable, to be worried about dying.

He's more worried about the village, and what will happen to it once he is gone. What will Orochimaru do? How long will it take the men back home to realize that he's gone, and elect a successor so Kaze will remain stable? Who will come after him into the title of Kazekage? Will there be anyone capable of taking up the role? Will there even be anyone willing to take up the role?

_The people believe that the office is cursed; they have ever since the Sandaime disappeared. Perhaps, _the Kazekage thinks, with a touch of wryness he hadn't thought possible of himself anymore, _perhaps they were right, and I should have seen this coming._

_But what will happen to Sunagakure, after I am gone._

It's all come to this, to the dust gathering on his lips, and to the bitter realization that he'll die before Sunagakure can recover and become what it once was, that it might never recover at all. Sunagakure might collapse and be swallowed up by the dunes, the rest of the country going with it, and there will be nothing he can do to stop it, because he'll be dead. _That would be my Hell, to be dead and watch, powerless, as everything came to ruin and Kaze's shinobi were scattered to the four winds. I wouldn't need to burn in Hell; I'd just have to watch that, and it would be enough, to watch and be able to do nothing._

_And my children…_

Images rise, unbidden, in his mind.

When she was a year and a half old, Temari stepped on and was stung by a scorpion. Her worried parents had immediately taken her to a hospital, leaving Kankuro with Yashamaru. The Kazekage can still remember, like the memories of this morning, how his blood had run cold to hear her thin, high wails and to see the creature scuttling away towards the street. Karura had wrung her hands the whole time, growing increasingly hysterical with each hour; the scorpion that had stung Temari was of a particularly venomous species. It was past dark when the anti-venom the doctor had given her had finally helped enough that the Kazekage and Karura were allowed to take her home. He remembers carrying his daughter home, her head lolled on his shoulder and her soft gold hair brushing his skin as she slept feverishly.

_I had thought she was going to die and recoiled from the possibility. I was frightened. That's it, I was frightened. Children die from scorpion stings all the time. I told myself that of course she wouldn't, but only when the doctor said we could take her home did I breathe like a living man._

Kankuro proved that he had quick and clever hands early on in life, when he came rushing up to his father one day in the hall with a squirming fat sand rat, a large species of gerbil, clutched in his grubby hands. The Governmental Complex is infested with sand rats; whenever cobras or puff adders or asps are found in the building, they're usually hunting sand rats. For all that they have soft, round bodies, sand rats are fast creatures, and that Kankuro, just four years old, was able to catch one, was admirable.

_I praised him; it was one of the few times I did. His face fell when I told him to let the rat go—he'd wanted to keep it as a pet._

As those images sink back down into the abyss, others rise to take their place, quickly, almost eagerly, but to the Kazekage they seem dull and sluggish, stretching their journeys over the lifespan of an eternity.

Gaara, huddling in a windowsill and staring out at the waning moon, silent and almost pained, his skin bathed completely white. (_Not for the first time, the Kazekage wishes he could know what his son was thinking._)

Yashamaru, with doubt and the future in his eyes, hating him but never saying no. (_He'd been right. That thought has struck the Kazekage a thousand times and it hits him again now. He and his sister had been right about everything._)

Karura, sitting slouched on the stoop of the house where she had lived in the Immigrant Quarter before they were married, saying something with a smile on her lips and a dancing light in her green eyes. He's forgotten what she was saying, and wishes he could remember. _(Yashamaru had been so angry when he found out that the Kazekage had had her body buried rather than cremated. The Kazekage knew that this was the custom of their people, to burn the bodies of the dead, but cremation is taboo by his own people and he just couldn't bear to…_)

He hopes that Kankuro and Temari will be alright. He hopes that maybe, some day, Gaara will find some semblance of peace, and that he'll be allowed to live long enough for that to happen. In the long, suspended moment before death, he finds that he regrets all of it, the waste of life and blood and tears, the strangers he made out of his first two children, the all-too-human monster he made out of his youngest child, the cold corpses he made out of his wife and brother-in-law. He regrets that he couldn't see that it would come to this, if he made a jinchuuriki out of Gaara.

The final image the Kazekage sees is of himself, sixteen years younger, as he is told of the council's decision and accepts the office of Yondaime Kazekage. He wonders, if he had known then what he knows now, if he still would have chosen to become Kazekage and shoulder the burden of the fate of an entire country.

_No. I'm not sure that I would._


	20. Epilogue: Changing of the Guard

Well, here it is, the last chapter and epilogue of _Ruler of the Sands_. It's been fun, guys, and thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed and given feedback. I probably won't start my next Suna character-centric multi-chapter fic (as you can gather, I like to write lots and lots of slice-of-life fics) until after summer break starts.

* * *

_Changing of the Guard_

* * *

As soon as he shuts his eyes for what he's sure will be the last time, they're open again, looking on an unfamiliar landscape. This is sandy soil beneath his feet, and there is hard-packed flatland and rock formations all around him, but the Kazekage knows that this isn't Kaze no Kuni. The air is too cold, empty of the blistering heat of the desert in midsummer.

At first, he wonders where he is and how he got here. _More importantly_, the Kazekage realizes, _I seem to recall having a gaping wound in my chest and out through my back. Where did that go? That's not exactly something that just goes away, even with the help of the most gifted of medics._

Then, he gets a good look at the men around him, and understands. Nidaime Tsuchikage, Nidaime Mizukage, Sandaime Raikage. These men are all long-dead; the Kazekage knows of their faces only from history books, and of their deeds, only from the tales of the village elders. Only the Raikage was alive during his lifetime.

It's Edo Tensei, then. The Kazekage feels a sharp shoot of anger in his chest, at being used in such a way. This was originally the technique of the Nidaime Hokage (the _accursed _technique, as the Tsuchikage snarls), but was co-opted by Orochimaru. Orochimaru had related to the Kazekage his intent to use the jutsu during the planned assault on Konohagakure; he'd said that he had made _improvements _on it. The Kazekage had scoffed and dismissed Edo Tensei as a trash technique; it was documented that the dead could be brought back to life, but when the Nidaime Hokage used it his revenants never fought at even half their original strength. How can a shinobi fight at full strength without their will intact?

However, perhaps there is some value to this trash technique after all.

What the Tsuchikage says is what first tips off the Kazekage. There is a large massing of shinobi nearby, likely an army. The army shows signs of being a mixture of all the nations, and one of them "has a similar signature to the new guy." By that, the Tsuchikage would have to be referring to a blood relative, and the Kazekage has only his children as blood relatives close enough to have a similar chakra signature to his own. In theory, any one of his children could be the person the Tsuchikage refers to, but in practice it can only be Gaara. When he sees the Third Eye, which the other three are too busy arguing with each other to notice, that only cements it in the Kazekage's mind.

Gaara.

Gaara is coming.

Will he have changed?

The Kazekage doesn't know how long it's been since he died, and wishes he did. Has it been a day, a month, a year, a decade? Has it been long enough for Suna to notice that he's dead? If so, then the Kazekage is survived that Gaara was allowed to live—the council was still very much in favor of having the Shukaku extracted from him.

It could be that Gaara finally crushed Suna beneath the Shukaku's heel. This is the possible path that the Kazekage has always shuddered away from, and it is no more attracted to him now when he is dead and ought to not to care. That is the image that flashes in his mind—Suna crushed, burning, dead. Her people dead and scattered. The nation screaming, and a ravening beast roaming the desert, crushing all in its path and greedily gulping up their blood.

_Maybe he's changed. _There comes that hope, rising in his mind. Maybe Gaara has changed. After all, the Kazekage has no idea just how long he's been dead. It may well have been long enough for Gaara to change. He may well have found the peace and stability that had always eluded him. But this seems unlikely, to say the least, and the Kazekage is anything but optimistic.

Either way, whether Gaara has changed or not, the Kazekage does not want to see him. His son, his weapon, his monster, his responsibility, his fault. The dead can not learn, the dead can not change, and the dead can not take away anything from the living and find a reason to hope. That is why the dead are supposed to rest undisturbed.

-0-0-0-

Well, maybe he was wrong again.

The first thing that was obvious to the Kazekage upon seeing Gaara was that he had actually managed to change—he could barely see the change in years, for apart from a growth of several inches, there really wasn't much change in Gaara's physical form, but the change in his psyche was profound. He seemed… calm. Gaara had had a stillness to him when his father was alive to see it, but never was he calm, not really; he was just quiet and watchful, but never calm, because calmness would have suggested that he had some level of peace.

Maybe that was because the Shukaku was apparently gone. The Kazekage has a hard time believing that Chiyo would stick her neck out for anyone, let alone Gaara, but it was undeniable that the Shukaku was gone out of him (one could hardly miss the lack of demonic chakra), it was undeniable that extraction would have killed Gaara, and it was also undeniable that Chiyo knew of a way to bring the dead back. _What must have been going through her mind?_

Whatever level of peace Gaara had found, while the Kazekage might have been happy about that, he couldn't say that he was happy about what Gaara revealed next. Gaara, Kazekage? The Yondaime was amazed that Suna was still standing in that case; to look at Gaara it was obvious that it had been years since he died, but there was no way the boy could be out of his teens. It seemed that the advisory council had made Gaara Kazekage in an effort to keep Suna's jinchuuriki host where they could see him. The Yondaime could understand that. But it didn't mean that he was happy…

_No. No, that's not the point._

_That doesn't matter._

Of all the things the Kazekage never expected—or wanted—to see, the face of his long-dead wife emerging from the sand so often wielded by his youngest son ranks high among them. No spirit, no soul, but just an imprint of a dying mother's will on the nature of a demon, and a fragment of her consciousness there, making itself visible at last. _Oh God. _Well there's Karura, making her opinion known in a way that can't be ignored, just like always.

This is my son. No one can hurt him, and especially not you.

_What have I done to Gaara? I've asked myself that question so many times, and over the years, my answer changed. But now the question is different as well. What did I do to them both?_

Trapped as he is in a pillar of Gaara and Karura's unyielding sand, the Kazekage sees nothing to do except tell Gaara everything. To tell him the truth about himself, his mother and his uncle, to put the lie to rest. If anything is to be called atonement, this is it, and he doesn't expect Gaara to forgive him. Even from a person without Gaara's disadvantages, without his problems, the Kazekage knows that there are few who would forgive him for robbing them of the love of their mother and the man who was more father to them than their father himself. Who could forgive that? It's a monstrous act; who could forgive such a thing?

And yet…

"Thank you, Father."

And yet, maybe Gaara still has it in him to surprise his father after all.

His skin is flaking off, going back to the dust it once was, like the act of creation in reverse. But the Kazekage doesn't care about that; if he is to go back down into death, at least he can do so without regret. "More than I imagined, more than you can know, you surpassed me. I'm so glad—"

It's good to be forgiven, and put his fears to rest. The Kazekage knows who he can leave the future to.


End file.
